From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 13 2005 - 21:11:38 GMT
Hello everyone
>From: "Sam Norton" <elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: MD categorising the mental
>Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:57:58 -0000
>
>Hi Dan,
>
>I've changed the name of the thread, as I think this needs to stand
>separately to the 'pure experience' bit.
Hi Sam
Yes that's fine.
>
>>Ontologically speaking, experience is never direct. We derive static
>>quality patterns of value Dynamically, now, but we experience by
>>remembering the moment past. If you read carefully, you'll note that
>>Anthony doesn't actually say mind and matter are identical; he says they
>>can be perceived as identical....
>
>As I understand it, even claiming this is enough to remain within the
>Cartesian theatre (which we all agree is the greatest sin possible). In
>other words, the issue is treating mind and matter along parallel lines,
>however complex the metaphysical framework surrounding them (and however
>distinct they are then made).
I tend to disagree although the difference is very subtle to be sure.
Perhaps this quote from Lila's Child will help:
"I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV paper that the key to
integrating the MOQ with science is through philosophic idealism, which says
that objects grow out of ideas, not the other way around. Since at the most
primary level the observed and the observer are both
intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes of quantum theory have to be
conflicts of intellectual assumption, not just conflicts of what is
observed. Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed always
involves an interaction with ideas that have been previously assumed.
So the problem is not, “How can observed nature be so screwy?” but can also
be, “What is wrong with our most primitive assumptions that our set of ideas
called ‘nature’ are turning out to be this screwy?” Getting back to physics,
this question becomes, “Why should we assume that the slit experiment should
perform differently than it does?” I think that if researched it would be
found that buried in the data of the slit experiment is an assumption that
light exists and follows consistent laws independently of any human
experience. If so, the MOQ would say that although in the past this seems to
have been the highest quality assumption one can make about light, there may
be a higher quality one that contradicts it. This is pretty much what the
physicists are saying but the MOQ provides a sound metaphysical structure
within which they can say it." (Robert Pirsig, annotation 102)
>
>As I'm in the mood for quoting things, here's one from PMS Hacker, in
>"Wittgenstein's place in twentieth-century analytical philosophy", p131:
>"...many twentieth century materialists, vehemently repudiating the
>Cartesian conception of the mind as a spiritual substance, retained the
>fundamental logical structures attributed to psychological concepts by the
>dualist picture, simply substituting the brain for mental substance, grey
>glutinous matter for ethereal stuff."
>[Here it seems we could substitute 'intellectual patterns of quality' for
>'grey glutinous matter']
I don't think this is right. I believe the MOQ would call "grey glutinous
matter" inorganic patterns of value, not intellectual patterns.
>Hacker goes on:
>"Wittgenstein's originality manifested itself here with no less vividness
>than in the domains of philosophy of logic, language and mathematics. Here,
>too, he questioned the framework of the centuries old debate, holding that
>philosophers do not place the question marks deep enough down. What should
>be challenged is the inner/outer picture of the mind, the conception of the
>mental as a 'world' accessible to its subject by introspection, the
>conception of introspection as an analogue of perception, the idea that the
>capacity to say how things are with us is a form of knowledge, the notion
>that human behaviour is 'bare bodily movement', the thought that voluntary
>action is bodily movement caused by acts of will, the supposition that
>explanation of human behaviour in terms of reasons and motives is causal,
>and the pervasive influence of the Augustinian picture of language which
>inclines us to think that psychological expressions are uniformly or
>typically names of mental objects, states, events and processes. In the
>Investigations and in subsequent writings, Wittgenstein dismantled the very
>structure of received thought about philosophical psychology, reassembling
>the familiar components constituted by our manifold uses of psychological
>expressions in a surveyable representation of the grammar of the mental and
>its behavioural expression."
From Philosophical Investigations:
"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of
their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something --
because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry
do not strike a man at all. Unless THAT fact has at some time struck
him.--And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most
striking and most powerful." (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
>
>Thing is, when Pirsig says that the physical and biological levels
>correspond to the 'objective' part of SOM, and the social and intellectual
>to the 'subjective' part, he seems to be reproducing precisely the
>'fundamental logical structures' of Cartesianism. And Ant's comments in his
>thesis seemed to support that interpretation of Pirsig. Which is why I'm
>now offering up this question.
I'm not sure this is correct as I think you'll find Robert Pirsig
specifically repudiates "spiritual substance" in the Copleston annotations
found on Anthony McWatt's website:
"It would seem at first appearance that Quality might be an equivalent of
Spirit, but this would be an enormous mistake. Quality is spiritual only to
the extent that motorcycles and sausages are spiritual." (Robert Pirsig)
>
>I should emphasise that I haven't fully absorbed all of what Wittgenstein
>has to say on the subject (it's his understanding of religion that I have
>most explored) but as I have slowly worked my way into it, the tensions
>between his insights and the MoQ become more and more pressing. And I find
>conversation a useful way of discovering truth. I learn things from the
>conversations here. I suppose what I'm doing is trying to find out where
>Antony places Pirsig vis-a-vis the Wittgensteinian approach. There are lots
>of areas where they seem to be parallel, but also some where they seem to
>contradict each other. This seems one of the latter, and worth exploring.
I too learn a great deal from conversations and discussions. Why, just in
this reply I've consulted a dozen books ranging from Mind and Nature by
Gregory Bateson to Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution. There are several
other books I wanted to consult but I'm still in the midst of unpacking them
all from my move last fall and alas they seem lost. But never fear, I know
they are here. But really, like you, I think we should make the attempt to
keep things simple and familiar lest we are led astray.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they were so bred.
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
(John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, quoted in Mind and Nature)
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