From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2005 - 18:52:42 GMT
problematic)
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Hi Scott,
I'm in the process of going back over your and Ian's posts, I apologize
then if this post asks things you've already covered. (Also, I do not
pretend, nor make any claims to be an expert on semiotics. Just a student
looking for understanding. :-))
>What I want to say here is why I think the MOQ's view on language (and
>intellect) has its roots in SOM, and has not escaped it. SOM splits reality
>into mind and nature. Language belongs to mind.
I've been working (in my look at presemiosis/DQ) from the assumption that
semiosis is not a function of mind exclusively, or of nature exclusively
(as structural linguistics suggests), but the dialectical event between
nature and mind, through social practice.
Analogously, to revert to SOM for a moment, "nature" is the "luminous,
tactic, thermic..." swarm around us, "mind" is (to me) at first the
presemiotic response to this swarm. Through the appropriation of social
semiosis, the "mind" becomes able to form representations of this primary
experience and in so doing effect its ability to act back upon the
luminous, tactile, thermic swarm (hence the dialectical relation).
Presemiosis provides the Quality-driven response to a thermic experiences,
for example, while semiosis does not just provide a social representation
for "heat" within the mind, but also allows for the possibility of
controlling fire, or building a stove, or an internal combustion engine
(acting back upon the swarm).
So far, I have not found anything in Pirsig that would contradict this, as
I think he only ever tangentally eluded to language and semiosis.
> The only
>difference that I can see between a SOM materialist view and the MOQ is that
>the MOQ has added DQ to account for value and as a means for development up
>the levels (in which role it seems to me to be theistic). And to bring in
>mysticism. But the way it brings in mysticism is also SOM-based. (I won't go
>into this, but it is the original impetus of this thread: "Pure experience
>and the Kantian problematic" -- arising from Sam's essay on moq.org).
This is an area where I see the problem of trying to use a semiotic system
(language) to capture Quality. Because semiosis (in my opinion) is itself a
root cause of SOM (whether by definition or by cultural-historical
evolution), everything put into a semiotic structure will smack of SOM. The
Eastern practice of "losing the 'I'" is a retreat from language, and the
illusions of separateness it creates. All mystic practice is in some way an
attempt to prolong a state of presemiosis. In my opinion, no semiotic
system could ever capture mystic practices for this reason, it can only
discuss it analogously. Pirsig states his awareness of this dilemma, yet
believes the explanatory effect of the MOQ in replacing SOM is worth it.
Eastern practicioners would, of course, reject it (and any and all semiotic
accounts of Quality (or the Buddha, or whatever) as hopelessly caught in
divisions that could never capture the whole).
As an aside, the English language is perhaps the most SOM structured
language-semiotic, as it is arguably the most I-weighted language in modern
practice (thus, the person appropriating English is participating in a
semiotic system heavily weighted towards the separateness (and uniqueness)
of the "I" against the background of "the world"). Not that semiosis is a
causal phenomenon, as it is certainly possible to be an English speaker and
reject SOM, but it is very difficult (and most Eastern philosophy says
impossible) to express this within the language.
>With respect to what you say here, I will point out that you emphasize
>language's role in discriminating, and hence limiting the full panoply of
>that of which it is possible to be aware. This can be turned around, by
>saying that language (or better, intellect) creates *by* discriminating.
>Without it there is only chaos. By making distinctions, reality comes into
>being.
I agree. As I said above, semiosis is a dialectic, allowing an acting back
upon the swarm. And, of course, with the ability to build social edifices
(static-latching), semiosis allows cultural development and maintenance of
our actions. I do see this, which is why I call it a double-edged sword. In
this sense "reality" is the dialect between the swarm and our ability to
act back upon it (and to latch these actions), and not either just "the
swarm" or just "our representations of the swarm".
But I wouldn't call it "chaos", as chaos implies randomness and
purposelessness. In my view, I'd say "Without it (semiosis) there is only
undifferentiated experience (DQ). By making distinctions (appropriating a
social semiotic) and acting back upon the experience (mediation), reality
comes into being."
So, I guess this is a long (and hopefully not too scattered) way of saying
I don't see how the MOQ denies this. Unless you mean that by formulating
the MOQ, Pirsig is trying to force presemiotic experience into a semiotic
frame. I agree with this criticism, I just don't see any other solution
other than a mystical retreat from semiosis altogether.
>- Scott
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Arlo Bensinger" <ajb102@psu.edu>
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 2:42 PM
>Subject: RE: ID/Ling, again (was Re: MD Pure experience and the Kantian
>problematic)
>
>
>Scott/Paul,
>
>Just to chime in quick...
>
>I am currently working on a paper that links pre-semiosis with Dynamic
>Quality. Pirsig began in ZMM:
>
>The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the
>building of this structure [semiosis], is something everybody does. All the
>time we are aware of millions of things around us- these changing shapes,
>these burning hills, the sound of the engine [clip]- aware of these things
>but not really conscious of them [presemiosis] unless there is something
>unusual or unless the reflect something we are predisposed to see [based on
>our cultural-historical semiotic mediation]. [clip] From all this awareness
>we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same
>as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it [Quality can
>never be captured in a semiotic system of this distortive process]. [big
>clip]. To understand what he was trying to do it's necessary to see that
>part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a
>figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles.
>
>Pirsig uses the amoeba and heat example, in that the response to heat is
>presemiotic (Dynamic) first, as in "this is poor Quality", and
>semiotically-mediated (in humans) later with the conscious understanding of
>"heat". An infant would respond like the amoeba by having only the
>awareness of low Quality. Eventually, as the infant ages, he/she will be
>able to formulate this experience into a semiotic system to symbollically
>re-experience the experience culturally, but always after the primary DQ
>experience.
>
>Umberto Eco calls the presemiotic experience that prompts semiotic response
>the "Dynamical Object" (the use of Dynamic is coincidental). In Kant and
>the Platypus, Eco says, mirroring Pirsig:
>
>But there is a phenomenon we must understand as presemiotic, or
>protosemiotic (in the sense that it constitutes the signal that gets the
>semiosic process underway), which we will call primary indexicality [clip].
>Primary indexicality occurs when, amid the thick stuff of sensations that
>bombard us, we suddenly select something that we set against the general
>background and decide we want to speak about it (when, in other words,
>while we live surrounded by luminous, thermile, tactic, and interoceptive
>sensations, only one of these attracts our attention, and only afterward we
>say that it is cold, or we have a sore foot).
>
>Before language, before semiosis, there is only uncategorized,
>unconceptualized, unmediated "experience". Eastern mysticism, in it many
>guises, has an ubiquitous element of "escaping words" either through
>meditation, live burial, paradoxes, koans, etc. This desire to return to
>presemiotic experience, Pirsig links up with "experiencing Dynamic
>Quality". Platt refers to it very eloquently in his writings on art.
>
>With infants, I think their prelingual, presemiotic experience is very much
>pure Dynamic Quality. With adults, the "key" is to return to a state of
>semiosis (language) with some insight or improvement based on your journey
>into presemiosis. Infants are, of course, unable to do this as they have
>not appropriated any semiotic system.
>
>In this sense, language is a form of symbolic violence (to paraphrase
>Bourdieu), in that though it is vital for our survival, and our ability to
>construct static, social-cultural-historical edifices, it does, in effect,
>rip us out of primary, direct experience of the world, and creates the
>false illusion of SOM. A double-edged sword, if you will.
>
>Arlo
>
>
>
>
>At 02:40 PM 2/15/2005, you wrote:
> >Scott
> >
> >Scott said:
> >Hence the gist of my metaphysics: to reject the
> >language/world-without-language distinction.
> >
> >Paul:
> >What about the pre-lingual experience of infants?
> >
> >Regards
> >
> >Paul
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