From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 14 2005 - 11:54:11 GMT
Hi Dan,
Sam said:
>>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']
Dan said:
> I don't think this is right. I believe the MOQ would call "grey glutinous
> matter" inorganic patterns of value, not intellectual patterns.
My comment may have been unclear, but it's worth spelling out what I meant:
'intellectual patterns of quality' can be substituted for 'grey glutinous
matter' _in_the_quote_from_Hacker_. So the quote would then read: "...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 [the third and fourth levels] for mental
substance, [intellectual patterns of quality] for ethereal stuff."
So it's not that the intellectual patterns = grey glutinous stuff, it's that
the intellectual patterns stand in relation to the biological patterns etc
in an analogous fashion to the way that Descartes described the relationship
between mind and matter. That's what Lash (and behind him Wittgenstein) are
trying to unpick.
For what it's worth, I think your baseball analogy is as pure an example of
the Cartesian theatre as it is possible to provide. To say "I'm still
processing the experience through my senses, filtering it, ignoring most of
what I experience in favor of what I deem important" is, it seems to me,
100% Cartesian. That such a view seems to be grounded in the MoQ only
confirms my impression that Pirsig's comment about S/O corresponding to
soc/int vs bio/phys is a severely wrong turn.
BTW this is a discussion about the categorising of the static patterns, not
Quality "as such", so I'm completely at peace with the Quality of sausages
:o)
Sam
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