From: David Morey (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Mon Nov 15 2004 - 19:14:45 GMT
DMB
I think your argument here is a good one. I agree
that what Scott brings to us can be shown to agree with the
MOQ overall, that these other thinkers deepen our understanding
and are important additions to Pirsig but like you I see no
fundamental disagreeement just some width and depth added.
But all credit to Scott for bring these extra angles into the
conversation, shame we seem to need to get into the adversarial
stuff first, but I guess that is sometimes useful to get to the bottom
of stuff. But I suspect Scott may still be upset that you don't want
to use intellect too closely in association with DQ, I see no real
problem with that, maybe you don't either, just have to distinguish it
from the more limited use in association with the 4th level.
DM
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 2:01 AM
Subject: RE: MD Empiricism and its limitations
> Scott and all MOQers:
>
> dmb says:
> I'd like to take a look at the quotes from "Franklin Merrell-Wolff (all
> taken from the chapter "A Mystical Unfoldment" from Philosophy of
> Consciousness Without an Object, reprinted in Experience and Philosophy)"
> and compare them to Pirsig's ideas. Why? Because you seem to be posting
> them
> in order to differ from Pirsig, but I think they are very much on the same
> page, because you seem to think Pirsig needs what FMW has, but I think he
> already has that - and then some....
>
> "I had attained an intellectual grasp of the vitally important fact that
> transcendent consciousness differs from our ordinary consciousness in the
> primary respect that that it is a state of consciousness wherein the
> disjunction between the subject to consciousness and the object of
> consciousness is destroyed."
>
> dmb says:
> Doesn't Pirsig say the same thing, that subjects and objects are an
> intellectual construct and that immediate experience comes before this
> distinction is made? You bet he does. "Pure experience cannot be called
> either physical or psychical: it logically precedes this distinction."
> (Lila, 29)That's all he means when he says its "pre-intellectual"
> awareness,
> consciousness without subjects and objects. See? He's not saying that this
> form of awareness is stupid or devoid of content or whatever it is that
> has
> you objecting, he's just saying that the primary reality is undivided and
> that subjects and objects are the illusions necessary for normal waking
> consciousness, but which may be absent in a mystical experience, which
> "cleanses the doors of perception", as Blake put it.
>
> [The following is one of several effects noticed after his first
> Awakening.]
> "3. There is a sense of enormous *depth penetration* with two phases
> barely
> distinguishable during this first phase of insight. The first phase is
> highly noetic but superconceptual. [Footnote: By "superconceptual" I mean
> beyond the the form of all possible concepts that can be clothed in words.
> However, the nature of this knowledge is nearer to that of our purest
> concepts than it is to perceptual consciousness.] I had awareness of a
> kind
> of thought of such an enormous degree of abstraction and universality that
> it was barely discernible as being of noetic character. If we were to
> regard our most abstract concepts as being of the nature of tangible
> bodies, containing a hidden but substantial meaning, then this
> transcendent
> thought would be of the nature of the meaning without the conceptual
> embodiment. It is the compacted essence of thought, the "sentences" of
> which would require entire lifetimes for their elaboration in objective
> form and yet remain unexhausted at the conclusion of such effort. In my
> relative consciousness, I knew that I KNEW in cosmical proportions.
> However, no brain substance could be so refined as to be capable of
> attunement to the grand cosmical tread of those Thoughts."
>
> dmb says:
> Superconceptual, the compacted essence of thought, each sentence of which
> would require entire lifetimes to elaborate upon, knowledge of
> cosmological
> proportions. I think its pretty clear that he is comparing the experience
> to
> normal abstract thought and noraml analytical thinking, which would
> correspond to Pirsig's intellectual static patterns, but he's only doing
> so
> to describe how much this form of consciousness IS NOT LIKE normal waking
> consciousness. He's drawing a stark line between the two and is in fact
> painting a pretty good picture of what Pirsig described as the main idea
> in
> philosophical mysticism, that the ultimate reality is beyond words and
> concepts.
>
> "It is not the more familiar analytic kind of intellection.
> ...But there is another kind of intellection in
> which the concept is born spontaneously and has a curious identity with
> its
> object. The Life-force either brings to birth in the mind the concepts
> without conscious intellectual labor or moves in parallelism with such
> birth. Subsequently, when these concepts are viewed analytically and
> critically, I find them almost invariably peculiarly correct. In fact,
> they
> generally suggest correlations that are remarkably clarifying and have
> enabled me to check my insight with the recognition of others."
>
> dmb says:
> Doesn't this remind you of what happened to Pirsig in that teepee, where
> "his mind turned to the contemplation of complex transcendental
> realities",
> where he recieved the original insight, and then started latching it all
> down in the usual laborous way with his slips of paper and research and
> such? Sure it does. He learned something from this "superconceptual" realm
> and the validity of this insight is on display in the two books we are all
> here to discuss. And when I check his insights with others, it actually
> works.
>
> "Abstract ideas cease to be artificial derivatives from a particularized
> expereince, but are transformed into a sort of universal substantiality."
>
> dmb says:
> I think we hear the same thing from Pirsig when he says that ideas are as
> real as rocks and trees.
>
> "I feel myself closer to universals than to the particulars given through
> experience, the latter occupying an essentially derivative position and
> being only of instrumental value, significant solely as implements for the
> arousing of self-consciousness. As a consequence, my ultimate philosophic
> outlook cannot be comprehended within the forms that assume time, the
> subject-object relationship, and experience as original and irreducible
> constants of consciousness or reality. At the same time, although I find
> the Self to be an element of consciousness of more fundamental importance
> than the foregoing three, yet in the end it, also, is reduced to a
> derivative position in a more ultimate Reality."
>
> dmb says:
> Its more difficult to point to anything very specific, but I still see a
> remarkable similarity in Pirsig's attitude toward truth (intellectual
> static
> patterns) as ever evolving, ever changing, and as useful and good insofar
> as
> they promote the larger and ongoing free force of life. The static
> patterns
> are seen as servants of life and become sort of transparent to that
> purpose
> instead of the cold hard facts of scientific objectivity.
>
> Scott concluded:
> In sum, you can choose to stick to the limited empirical
> viewpoint, with its limited view of mysticism, or you can choose to
> understand that Merrell-Wolff has rediscovered what Plotinus and others
> mean by Intellect as prior to empirical reality. In my opinion, the MOQ
> can
> be expanded into a more adequate philosophy by these kind of insights.
>
> dmb says:
> Hopefully my post in the "Empiricism" thread has already addressed your
> charge of having a "limited empirical viewpoint". And I hope that same
> explanation, the three eyes, has also made it clear that mysticism is not
> excluded by my demand for empirical evidence. Hopefully its is now clear
> that explaining mysticism itself, as well as the insights he gained during
> such an experience, what the task that got Pirsig started in the first
> place. This is what I mean when I say the MOQ already includes what you
> wish
> to add. You're letting the words, labels, the jargon get in the way.
> Clearly, if "Intellect" with a capital "I" is that which is "prior to
> empirical reality", then surely it refers to what Pirsig would call DQ,
> the
> primary empirical reality and can only be CONTRASTED to the 4th level of
> static patterns. See? If you look at the ideas behind the words, it
> doesn't
> matter what we call it. (Except, as is apparently necessary in your case,
> when we have to sort out the confusion that such translations can cause.)
> Take the following quote for example. You have Plotinus opposed to Pirsig
> based on their differing uses of the word "intellect", but as the quote
> posted by Dan shows, they are refering to entirely different things with
> that word...
>
> "It is precisely because that is nothing within the One that all things
> are
> from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no
> Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act
> of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the
> One
>
> is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has
> produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been
> filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle."
>
> dmb continues:
> Do you see that Plotinus is here describing what Pirsig would call DQ?
> He's
> using the phrase intellectual-principle to describe it. And the thing that
> Pirsig would describe as an intellectual principle is here described as
> the
> "product that has turned again to its begetter". I think nearly everthing
> you post could be interpreted to fit with the MOQ and I honestly think
> these
> interpretaions that have the quotes in oppostion to Pirsig are just plain
> wrong. We could go through them all one by one if you like, but I'm
> getting
> a little weary. Instead, do me a favor will you? Read what I posted this
> weekend. There were serveral different threads and topic involved, but
> they
> are all inter-related and mutually supportive.
>
> It seems to me that we are not so very far apart and get excited by many
> of
> the same thinkers. But I'm totally frustrated at this idea that they do
> anything other than illuminate what Pirsig is saying and vice versa. The
> idea that you're using these same thinkers to criticize Pirsig's MOQ is
> just
> killing me. Its upside down and backwards. Its like you've hauled in a ton
> of evidence for the prosecution, but it only helps the defense.
>
> And the defense doesn't necessarily rest its case at this point, but he
> sure
> could use a nap. Thanks.
>
> dmb
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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