From: Les Barrett (les.barrett@lvnworth.com)
Date: Fri Jan 07 2005 - 19:25:08 GMT
I am new to this forum and not sure how it works, so I will venture out
by dropping this note.
I would like to offer up a possibility as to how certain concepts get
implanted in the mind. This problem was important to Kant's CoPR, or
Kritik der Reinen Vernunft.
If we consider a primitive organism responding to light or heat or
chemical or other stimuli, it is not a great leap to see the concept of
a straight line being formed in the genetic structure of, say, an
amoeba.
Other geometric concepts could also be registered as a primitive
organism struggles to feed and survive. Over the lengthy process of
evolution, the more successful creatures would be the ones able to
internalize, for instance, the concept that the shortest distance to a
meal is a straight line.
Various other concepts at this level could be implanted during genetic
development and become refined and combined as organisms evolve. This
could be some of the initial knowledge base that Kant maintains we are
born with. When one applies this knowledge to the world that appears at
one's fingertips as one grows up, it serves as the foundation of a new
and larger body of useful knowledge and logic unique to the individual
organism or person. How we internalize subsequent stimuli and other
information and how we combine this information into our nervous system
affects our ability to survive.
This area is not my field; however, I thought it might be an interesting
thought to bring up.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk] On Behalf Of Paul Turner
Sent: Friday, 07 January, 2005 10:59
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: MD Notes on Sam's Essay
Hi Sam
I’ve had a look at your essay and have made some notes below:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Central to any account of Western intellectual history is the figure of
Immanuel Kant, and considerations of mysticism are no different. A key
concept to understand is what has come to be known as the 'Kantian
problematic', which, in summary, goes something like this: all of our
knowledge comes to us from experience. However, since experience is
always our experience, it is never a pure experience, but is always
mediated and conditioned by the structure of our minds and apprehension.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: This is denied by the MOQ. It proposes that, ultimately, there is
no 'pre-existing' intellect that conditions primary experience. It
claims that a new-born infant has no intellectual consciousness and that
this consciousness is actually created by experience. As intellectual
consciousness is created the pure experience becomes conditioned. It
proposes that this primary experience can be regained through certain
practices.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What we experience are the phenomena, that which is provoked in us by
the thing in itself; things in themselves are noumena, and unknowable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: Again, this is denied outright by the MOQ i.e., it proposes that
there are no things-in-themselves.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This raised problems for religious believers. For although Kant accepted
the existence of God, it was in such an attenuated form as to be
unrecognisable as a focus of devotion, and his account of human
knowledge (his epistemology) ruled out any possibility of relationship
between a believer and God; we are simply physically incapable of
enjoying such an experience. At best, God is a useful idea, a means of
moral regulation.
This is the Kantian problematic: the notion that we cannot experience
God directly. It immediately brought forth a response, which, whilst
retaining the Kantian epistemology, argued that in certain circumstances
it was possible to have a 'pure' experience, i.e. to experience the
'noumena'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: Dispensing with the Kantian epistemology, the term pure experience
does not necessarily mean to "experience the noumena." Noumena are
denied by the MOQ so it is simply pure undifferentiated experience that
is taken as a starting point of reality and not any 'thing' in
particular that exists prior to experience.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<snip>
The academic community, for all its problems, does not stay still, and
this "Modern synthesis" has come under increasingly sustained criticism
over the last twenty years. It would be fair to say that it is now
largely rejected as a coherent account, certainly of religious mysticism
within the Christian tradition, and, by and large, as a description of
mysticism as such. I will run through the principal problems under two
headings, philosophical and historical.
Philosophical problems:
# the notion of 'pure experience' depends upon the Kantian
epistemological framework for its coherence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: This is simply not true, e.g. the notion of pure undifferentiated
experience exists in perfectly coherent oriental philosophy, which
developed independently of Kant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this is removed, then the concept becomes unworkable. As the Kantian
framework is - to put it mildly - heavily contested in the academy, it
is difficult to sustain this conception unless you are also prepared to
accept the wider Kantian understandings;
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: The philosophical concept of pure experience is not inextricably
bound to Kantian epistemology which is a subject-object construction.
Northrop is at least one western example, aside from Pirsig, that I can
think of that does away with this epistemology and starts with the
notion of undifferentiated experience as a workable concept.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
# the problem of 'essentialism', that is, the assumption that there is a
'common core' underlying all the different manifestations of mystical
experience. This is an inheritance from the Cartesian program, seeking a
reductive explanation of phenomena.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: Northrop argues that oriental philosophy shares a common core of
mystical understanding - of the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum -
which is clearly not inherited from the Cartesian individualist program.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
# the "Modern synthesis" depends upon an individualist epistemology,
again deriving from Descartes, which makes what happens to a particular
ego central. If this is rejected (which it generally has been) then,
once more, the synthesis breaks down .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: Again, Northrop is one example of philosophic mysticism which
denies that the ego is primary in experience.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The foregoing is a very rough and ready overview of current academic
debate on the subject of mysticism. I hope that if nothing else it has
imparted a flavour of the debate, and the points that are at issue.
However, if this was all there was to it, it could have remained as an
MD post. I think there is something more. If the academic community is
right in rejecting the Kantian problematic, and therefore the 'Modern
synthesis' understanding of mysticism - and the grounds for doing so are
really quite overwhelming - where does that leave Pirsig and the MoQ?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: In good shape because the MOQ also rejects Descartes and Kant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the links between the MoQ and Schleiermacher's project seem
profound, even down to some of the language used. Is it accurate to
describe the MoQ as simply a redescription of Schleiermacher's scheme,
that is, is not Dynamic Quality merely a Kantian 'pure experience', and
the levels of Static Quality merely a redescription of phenomena? If
not, why not?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: Because your basic premise, that 'pure experience' is Kantian by
definition, is false. The MOQ is a monism and noumena and phenomena
comprise a metaphysical dualism. What you have here is an example of the
same term being used in two completely different philosophical
propositions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not to suggest a direct borrowing, only to point out that
Pirsig's work - probably via William James - has inherited a conceptual
shape from Schleiermacher, and that conceptual shape is very largely
discredited within the academic community.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul: I have to disagree, at the very least because your claim is not
consistent with the biographical facts. May I point out that, in LILA,
Pirsig claims to have only seriously read William James (and even then,
selectively) after he had formulated the MOQ?
"The reason Phaedrus bought these books on James was that it was
necessary to bone up a little in order to protect his Metaphysics of
Quality against attack." [LILA p.372]
"In his undergraduate days Phaedrus had given James very short shrift
because of the title of one of his books...It smelled more like some
Victorian religious propagandist trying to smuggle God into the
laboratory data." [LILA p.373]
If there is a major western influence on Pirsig, and if you are looking
for "profound" similarities, I would argue that you need look no further
than Northrop. Also, recall that Pirsig studied oriental philosophy at
Benares and this has left an impression on the conceptual shape of the
MOQ which you cannot overlook, particularly with respect to his brand of
mysticism. These passages from ZMM seem relevant:
"The book states that there's a theoretic component of man's existence
which is primarily Western (and this corresponded to Phædrus' laboratory
past) and an esthetic component of man's existence which is seen more
strongly in the Orient (and this corresponded to Phædrus' Korean past)
and that these never seem to meet. These terms "theoretic" and
"esthetic" correspond to what Phædrus later called classic and romantic
modes of reality and probably shaped these terms in his mind more than
he ever knew. The difference is that the classic reality is primarily
theoretic but has its own esthetics too. The romantic reality is
primarily esthetic, but has its theory too. The theoretic and esthetic
split is between components of a single world. The classic and romantic
split is between two separate worlds. The philosophy book, which is
called The Meeting of East and West, by F.S. C. Northrop, suggests that
greater cognizance be made of the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum"
from which the theoretic arises." [ZMM p.123]
"He didn't jump from Immanuel Kant to Bozeman, Montana. During this span
of ten years he lived in India for a long time studying Oriental
philosophy at Benares Hindu University.
As far as I know he didn't learn any occult secrets there. Nothing much
happened at all except exposures. He listened to philosophers, visited
religious persons, absorbed and thought and then absorbed and thought
some more, and that was about all. All his letters show is an enormous
confusion of contradictions and incongruities and divergences and
exceptions to any rule he formulated about the things he observed. He'd
entered India an empirical scientist, and he left India an empirical
scientist, not much wiser than he had been when he'd come. However, he'd
been exposed to a lot and had acquired a kind of latent image that
appeared in conjunction with many other latent images later on.
Some of these latencies should be summarized because they become
important later on. He became aware that the doctrinal differences among
Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as
doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy
wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about
reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit
doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything
you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided.
To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened." [ZMM
p.143]
In a nutshell, if your account of 'the modern synthesis' is accurate
then Pirsig's system is not derived from it, despite the similarities in
language.
Regards
Paul
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