From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Jun 08 2005 - 08:36:23 BST
Matt, Bo, Paul, all concerned --
I have admonished Paul, an excellent analytical thinker, to try for
simplicity. I shall attempt the same, although I'll probably be accused of
attacking a belief system of which I never really was a part.
As an outsider, I say: Who cares whether ideas reside in the fourth level of
Quality or whether static patterns start at the inorganic or organic level?
This means nothing to me. Frankly, it can have meaning only for those whose
sole purpose here is keeping the MoQ intact against all extraneous ideas.
The sum and substance of most of these discussions is how to fit every
phenomenon known to man into a hierarchical system that no one really
understands and that was the last resort of an author looking for academic
recognition in Philosophy. If I may be so bold, you are waging intense
dialectical battles over matters that have about as much significance as the
14th century clerical debates over how many angels can dance on the head of
a pin.
Matt speaks eloquently of pragmatism, and praises any post that takes a
pragmatic position -- including those of Paul who now sees reality as
semiotic, while Bo is still quoting RMP scripture. I realize that this
forum is dedicated to the MoQ. But are we any closer to reaching a
consensus (Pauls' favorite word) on this philosophy than the allocation of
categories? There is no enlightenment in that. Whatever one believes about
the essence of Reality, it surely must be more than levels and patterns.
A philosophy has to account in some logical, non-equivocal way for cognizant
awareness, for example. As an anthropocentrist, this is a vital issue to
me. I gave up trying to get a workable definition of consciousness from
Platt, and now Paul is also circling all around the issue. In case you
haven't followed this thread, here are some of the things he's asserted:
> In the MOQ, mind is not the source of beliefs. Quality is the source of
> beliefs and mind is a term for describing the collection of, and
> relationships between, beliefs.
>
> In a weaker sense, an individual's mind (defined as above) might be
> considered a "source" of beliefs (e.g. your parent causing you to have
> beliefs by you finding their beliefs, or maybe just their authority,
> valuable).
> In the context of the prevailing scientific world-view, and the MOQ static
> levels, material evolution occurred independently and prior to our
beliefs.
> There is idiosyncrasy in one's beliefs but to develop your own truly
> personal belief system you would first have to develop your own personal
> language system.
> Instead of an innate function of some "organ" called mind, one may
> say that reason is just an acquired and/or learned skill of using
> conventional symbols within a set of rules to predict and help control
one's
> experience.
According to Paul, mind is an organ that collects belief systems for which
we need a special language and approval by consensus. But how do we arrive
at consensus without individual cognizance? He allows that reason may be
associated with mind but that it's "just an acquired skill of using symbols
and rules." So where is individual awareness in this collective belief
system? The phrase "idiosyncrasy in one's beliefs" is about as close as he
comes to defining consciousness.
Now we have Matt admitting his admiration for this incomprehensible Pirsig
quote (before proceeding to tear it apart):
> "It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although
> 'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature comes first, actually
> common sense which is a set of ideas has to come first. This common
> sense is arrived at through a huge web of socially approved evaluations
> of various alternatives. The key term here is evaluation, i.e. quality
> decisions. The fundamental reality is not the common sense or the
> objects and the laws approved of by common sense, but the approval
> itself and the quality that leads to it."
Matt's critique is even more cryptic:
> The whole 'come first' part I think leads to pointless chicken and egg
> squabbles. We will never get to the bottom of which came first.
> Our linguistic activity is completely tied up with the world as we
> experience it. Our common sense does say that inorganic
> nature came first, but the moral Pirsig should've drawn is that we can't
> pull common sense off of inorganic nature (i.e. we can't pull our
linguistic
> activity off of nature). He can still then move to his point about
socially
> approved evaluations. Which is a point about intersubjectivity."
It's clear to me that when we talk about history or evolution it is assumed
that we are discussing experience in the physical world of time and space.
Pirsig knows this, Matt knows this, Paul knows this, even I know this. So
why obfuscate the issue by challenging the sequence of events -- or the fact
that they occurred at all? Apparently you folks are so intimidated by the
scourge of SOM that you can't allow even the concept of a material reality
prior to human experience. That's ironic because, to people like me, the
MoQ's major shortcoming is its failure to acknowledge a transcendent
reality! At least I regard primary reality as immutable -- which means that
we can't assume that Absolute Essence can be applied to the finite world any
more than that finite descriptions can be applied to Essence.
It would appear that you're all stuck somewhere in the middle with Mr.
Pirsig's philosophy. Its reality is neither pragmatic nor idealistic.
Perhaps Paul had good reason to circle around this topic: as he seemed to be
telling me, the truth may be that primary reality is "symbolic". Get REAL,
gentlemen!
And thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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