From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Aug 31 2004 - 16:51:02 BST
Hi Paul, Ham, All:
Paul writes to Ham:
> Rand sees the relationship of mind to the brain as the same as that of
> digestion to the stomach. This is the kind of mistake that materialists are
> forced to make. The brain cannot be "shared or transferred" but ideas,
> which share none of the properties of matter, can and are. For someone who
> trumpets "reason," this is a poor example of it.
Reason says that for ideas to be shared or transferred, brains are required.
To put it another way, brains are "essential" to creation, sharing and
transferring of ideas. Don't you agree that ideas have an inorganic and
biological level foundation as well as a social one? Can ideas exist
without being created, shared or transferred by human beings who are a
combination of all value levels? To say that intellectual patterns
originate out of social patterns is merely to acknowledge that social
patterns are necessary for man's existence. It was man's symbol-making
ability (intellect) that created his social patterns in the first place.
In that sense the two levels of inseparable. Which level dominates is a
separate question.
> Also, if, instead of Rand's materialist assumptions, you see mind as
> dependent on social patterns e.g. language, then is it correct to say
> that each individual thinks in his own individual language, that, as
> language requires individuals to speak it that language is primarily
> private?
I don't know what you have against "materialist assumptions." They are
part and parcel of the MOQ, represented in the inorganic and biological
levels without which the higher levels would not have evolved. As for the
rest of the paragraph, it's hard to understand what you mean. I assume
it's written with tongue in cheek, but I'm not sure.
> Is "reason" an individual pattern?
Formal reasoning is an intellectual pattern created by an individual named
Aristotle.
> Then why aren't there several
> billions of different types of reason? Did each individual put forward his
> own proprietary way of reasoning until an "agreement was reached" and "an
> average drawn?" That must have been quite a meeting.
You're indulging in reductio ad absurdum. After Aristotle, others found
his logical reasoning to be of high quality, and one by one, it spread
throughout the Western world as the guide to quality thought. But as
Pirsig said about cultural change, someone, an individual, had to be
first, and Aristotle gets the credit, just as an individual by the name of
Pirsig gets the credit for inventing the MOQ.
> The MOQ argues that experience must be the starting point of philosophy.
> Where did the subject come from? Did the subject exist before it had an
> experience? What was it doing before it had an experience? How does a
> subject know it was already there without experience?
One could just as well argue that the individual must be the starting
point of philosophy. Where did the philosophy come from? Did the
philosophy exist before there was an individual to elucidate it? What was
the philosophy doing before the individual created it? How does anyone
know the philosophy existed before it was shared with other individuals?
What's got me thinking there's a problem with part of the MOQ is Pirsig's
appeal on the one hand to logical consistency and on the other hand
denying the concept of self while at the same time accepting the concept
of "I" throughout his writings.
It looks to me that neither Pirsig nor we can escape from I, me, my, you,
and yours -- referring to individuals -- any more than we can escape from
making value judgments.
Finally, it appears the word "collectivist" sets off alarm bells among
some participants. Why that's so among fans of the MOQ puzzles me because
the MOQ places intellect and its necessary condition, freedom of speech,
at a higher moral level than social values. I must be missing some
"nuance." :-)
Platt
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