Re: MD Whither "direct," "pure," and "immediate"?

From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 16 2005 - 18:16:25 GMT

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    Hi Ian, Dan,

    Ian said:
    IMHO - the use of pure / immefiate / direct in Pirsig / MoQ terms is to
    signify "pre-intellectual" experience. The more modern problem I see is that
    people may think it's being used to distinguish qualia from pre-cognitive
    experience, in which case we are generally not concerned with that here.

    Pre-intellectual, I'm talking raw, as in before reflective / rationalising
    interpretation of what is being experienced.

    Pre-cognitive, I'm talking raw, as in quanto-electro-chemical phenomena
    before their immediate interpratation as qualities like red, hot, pain,
    experiences.

    (Personally I don't think I believe in qualia, which may undermnine the
    distinction for me, but I think it's the distinction being confused.)

    Matt:
    If I understand you correctly here, what you call “pre-cognitive” would be
    something like our brain states (C-fiber stimulation, etc.) as opposed to
    our descriptions of them (as red, hot, etc.). If this is what you mean,
    then I would agree, qualia as an epistemological concept is suspect and I
    think “immediate” as a differentiation between the two types of description
    (roughly, a brain description and a mind description) is equally suspect.
    For pragmatists like Rorty, we can describe phenomena equally well in both
    types of descriptions, but neither one reduces to the other (this is the
    mind/brain identity thesis).

    As for the idea of “pre-intellectual experience,” this is the exact concept
    I would like to get rid of in Pirsig. Sure, we can make a distinction
    between our “immediate” impression of something before we think about it
    later more. But that’s just going along with common sense, which is what
    Dan is trying to convince us is all that Pirsig meant (with the difference
    between being at a baseball game and watching on TV, or watching a baseball
    game from wherever and thinking about it later). I don’t think it’s as
    apparent as that. I think Pirsig is trying to draw specifically
    philosophical consequences out of his idea of “pre-intellectual experience.”
      It seems to me that Pirsig is trying to say that our “pre-intellecual
    experience” of low Quality _happens before language_, and this
    pre-linguistic experience is closer to Quality than post-linguistic, that
    language is a mediation between us and reality. As he says in the famous
    hot stove example, “the low value comes first, then the subjective
    thoughts….” (Ch 8) Value first, thoughts, i.e. language, second. As far as
    I can see, there is no way to draw any philosophical consequences out of the
    idea of “pre-intellectual experience” that does not tie you into traditional
    problems. For pragmatists, there is no way to unhook language from
    experience, just as Pirsig agrees to when he says with Bohr that we are
    “suspended in language.” It seems to me that Pirsig equivocates between a
    commonsensical notion of direct experience and a specifically philosophical
    sense, and this equivocation is what allows him to gain plausibility for a
    specifically philosophical concept.

    At least, that’s how it seems to me. If it were otherwise, I’m not sure why
    Pirsig would spend so much time talking about the “pre-intellectual cutting
    edge of reality” and how that’s supposed to cure some of our specifically
    philosophical ailments. Its understood that common sense contains Platonic
    and Cartesian formations, as Dan alluded to elsewhere when he said, "Of
    course the [baseball] analogy is 'Cartesian theatre' in as much as our
    language is grounded in such a manner." But aren't we supposed to be
    changing such things in as much as we want our language to be better?

    Matt

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