From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Nov 27 2004 - 16:20:41 GMT
Platt,
> Thanks for explaining what you meant by a "new level of thinking." From
> your description it seems that what you're talking about is not new
> thought but old understanding. The limits of ordinary logic were well
known by Western philosophers even
> before Godel formalized it's basic contradiction.
Godel didn't show it as being contradictory, only incomplete. But yes, the
West was well aware of the limits of ordinary logic. The question is what
it made of those limits.
A typical illustrative paradox
> used in the West is: "The present never changes, but everything that
> changes changes in the present."
Well, I would not consider this paradoxical, since I don't see that the
"the present never changes" makes any sense. But the paradox of the one and
the many has been around since the pre-Socratics.
>
> > In ordinary logic, this is simply self-contradictory. In the logic of
> > contradictory identity, it is accepted as "the way it is". Buddhism is
> > known as the Middle Way. Originally, this referred to avoiding the
> > lifestyle extremes of hedonism (pursuit of the transitory things of the
> > world) and ascetism (rejection of those things). With Nagarjuna, it also
> > became applied to avoiding either pole of an apparent paradox, but to
learn
> > to see the two poles as necessarily in mutual contradiction, while being
> > mutually constituting. So, in considering the self, when one thinks of
the
> > self as being a continuous, existing thing, to offset this with the
> > realization that I am not the same person today that I was yesterday,
while
> > when one thinks that I am not the same person today that I was
yesterday,
> > to point out that I am *aware* of the change, so there is a continuity
> > between yesterday's self and today's. Hence, the continuity points to
> > saying "the self exists", while the change points to saying "the self
does
> > not exist", and so one says neither. Furthermore, the awareness of
change
> > presupposes the continuity, while if there were nochange to be aware of,
> > there would be no awareness of continuity. This implies that awareness
*is*
> > this interplay of continuity and change, and that the interplay of
> > continuity and change *is* what makes awareness happen.
>
> Pirsig's four levels constituting the "self" appear to cover these
matters
> fairly well. The inorganic remains mostly the same, parts of the
> biological level change not at all (DNA, fingerprints), the social milieu
> changes to some degree depending on circumstances but family
relationships
> remain constant, and the intellectual is bound to unchanging
mathematical,
> logic and language syntax. So simultaneous stability and change is not
> something unique or strange, leading me to wonder what's to be gained by
> having a "new intellectual attitude" toward the rather obvious.
What Pirsig's levels does not address is *awareness* of change. The
continuity I am speaking of is that sense of self which is aware of change.
So for this to address this would imply that the inorganic is aware of the
biological, the biological of the social, etc.Obviously, "some things
change, and some things stay the same", which can be restated as some
change happens within slower change. But where does awareness of change
come from? That is not at all obvious.
>
> > Thus, the step
> > toward thinking in terms of contradictory identity is that of going from
> > just treating the self as paradox to treating the self as a locus of
> > contradictory identity. Or, contradictory identity is not just a way to
> > think about the self, rather, contradictory identity is what makes the
self
> > happen.
>
> I don't follow your argument that the interplay of constancy and change
> make self and awareness happen. Seems to me that self begins at birth and
> ends at death while awareness (mind) is what the bulb of nerve tissue we
> call the brain links to.
It is not actually an argument. It is a hypothesis that I am working with.
I consider it untenable that the sense of self can arise out of neural
activity. The continuity (the sense of a continuing self) must span all the
changes in the brain and outside of it for there to be awareness of
anything.
> > One can apply the same logic to DQ and SQ, but if one does, one gets
> > something different from the treatment of these as given in the MOQ. The
> > MOQ tends to idolize DQ at the expense of SQ, for example by assuming
that
> > the mystical goal is to experience pure DQ by putting all SQ to sleep.
But
> > the logic of contradictory identity will see that as going off the
Middle
> > Way. DQ and SQ are contradictory identities, so it makes no sense to
speak
> > of "pure [DQ] experience" which is then SQ-ized by intellect. Rather,
DQ/SQ
> > interaction is what makes experience happen.
>
> I agree with Steve that you may have misinterpreted the MOQ. Quality is
> pure experience (mind) which for intellectual purposes Pirsig divides
into
> Dynamic and static.
See my reply to Steve. It looks to me like Pirsig equates pure experience
with DQ.
>
> Where we may agree is on the nature of consciousness (mind) as stated by
> physicist Erwin Schoedinger: "The external world and internal
> consciousness are one and the same thing." Pirsig adds the notion that
> consciousness (mind) is essentially a moral force. Now that's something
> really new to modern philosophy.
I would not quite agree with Schrodinger. While the external world is in
one sense the same as our consciousness, in that (so I think) it operates
under the same general form (contradictory identity), there is the
difference that the external does not appear to be under our control, while
the internal to some degree is. Because of that degree of control, we speak
of a self, and free will, and so on.
As to its being new to modern philosophy, it depends on how modern. It is
of course new to materialism. But Spinoza called his work on metaphysics
"Ethics", and in general idealists, such as Schelling and Bradley and
Coleridge would equate the True with the Good and the Beautiful.
- Scott
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