From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 15 2005 - 15:08:09 BST
Ham,
> That's all very nice poetry, and I can almost hear a choir with string
> accompaniment in the background. But isn't it the challenge of philosophy to
define reality in a logically credible fashion?
Fallacy #1: Everything the can be known can be explained by "rational thought",
i.e., explained by a philosophy. This is a wholly Western argument (for the
most part).
If this is possible, why in 2000+ years since the pre-Greek Western
philosophical tradition emerged has this not been done? In other words, why has
"philosophy" never been able to "define reality in a logically credible
fashion"? Or, if it has been done, why haven't you, or anyone else, gone "Hmmm,
okay, well THAT'S the answer, guess I can let go of the question now"?
The reason is that it is a futile attempt to capture this "primary source" in
words. The ananlogies are quite useful and promote a great deal of
understanding (that's what Pirsig was arguing about the Sophists). Instead,
we've embarked on a "quest" to force "all this" into literal, logical, human
words. You can waste your time on such a foolish, and in the end, impossible
and misguided endeavor. I, as well as many others, are quite happy with an
undefined "source" that can only be approached by "analogy".
> To take an esthetic human response, which is incapable of definition as a
generative force, and posit it as the "cause of the created world" is to
abandon logic for a phantasmagoria of word symbols.
No, it is to see your "logic" for what it is. "Essentialism" is your analogy,
Ham (or an amalgamation on your analogies). It is no more "truth" than
Idealism, Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, etc. You want this not to be the
case, that "essentialism" is "truth" and has been completely captured in words.
Why you have this need, I don't understand.
> Let's try an approach that's less pretty syntactically but closer to logic.
>
> If quality is the "stimulus our environment puts upon us to create the
> world", then the environment is the primary cause, and we are the world's
creators. But what is the "environment" if not our physical reality? Thus,
stripped of its poetry, the assertion being made here is that reality forces us
to create reality.
"Quality" is not "reality", Ham. Maybe that's your second fallacy. "Reality" is
the sum total of our experiences-through-Quality, beginning with a foundation
of analogies from which emerges human communicative activity, from which
emerges "intellect" and "logic".
> That such a tautology continues to impress Pirsig's
> followers is a tribute to the author's word mastery rather than his
> metaphysical logic.
Maybe its a tribute to our not needing to waste time encapsulating in words
something that can not be, nor will ever be, not by "Essentialism" or any other
"-ism". Pirsig was very clear the MOQ is also "just an analogy". It is
"better", to be sure (according to him and us, except for you), but it is not
"truth". To think you can capture this in a book of words, Ham, is a tribute to
ego, not to "metaphysical logic".
> The (otherwise plausible) concept that man creates his
> own reality loses logical credibility, unless something else -- Being,
> Spirit, Energy, Consciousness, Essence? -- is posited as the primary source.
>
> Pirsig doesn't try to develop that concept. In fact, he shuns it. As a
> consequence, there is no ontological support for the MoQ.
He does. Quality.
> > "Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented
> > by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among
> > these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are.
>
> Here is another example of illogical rhetoric, this time a blatantly false
premise. Just consider that statement. Even if we accept the author's
"analogue" that religion is some kind of "quality", there is no way that
religion can have been invented by anything but man. Now, I expect somebody
here to accuse me of being "too literal" in this interpretation. But this is a
philosophical discussion, for pete's sake, not a forum on poetic metaphor!
??? You have me completely lost with this one. Our understanding of what we are
is a response to Quality-experience. How can it be anything else?
> As for the postcript quotation which seems to have you enthralled, it is
> meaningless to me.
>
> > "These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind.
> > Every last bit of it."
>
> I have two questions concerning this statement:
> 1) What does "collective consciousness" have to do with any of the
> "analogues" previously quoted?
> 2) Why did Matt Kundert insist to me that he'd never seen the term and had no
idea what it meant? (I guess Matt will have to answer that one.)
The amalgamation of our analogues is the foundation for what the Greeks called
"the mythos", the sum total of a cultures "analogies" use to describe reality.
But, this is not a unidirectional "creation". What it does is predispose the
direction of people within that culture to value certain things and de-value
others.
Thus, we create the analogies, which then in turn create "us". To use Giddens'
word, they "structurate" our experience, or Bourdieu, they provide the
"habitus" which restricts (and affords) certain motions.
The "collective consciousness of all communicating humankind" a term that brings
into light the orienting aspect of language. Language, be it English, German,
Japanese or Hindi, is not merely a blind set of descriptors for viewing
"reality", it mediates we see the world. And language is not divorced from
culture, is it part of it, so that internalization of a language within a
cultural backdrop of stories, music, art, activities, division of labor,
religious practices, culinary habits, everything... is the internalization of
"culture" and that culture's predispositions for seeing and not-seeing certain
things based ultimately on the "mythos", the agreed upon set of analogues that
define a culture.
You, Ham, are not an objective, independant viewer and chronicler of "reality".
You are bound by the collective consciousness of your culture and language to
"see" the world a certain way, with certain things valued, and others devalued.
This is precisely why Pirsig "was labeled insane", and what brought him back to
challenge the SOM that was structurating and predisposing people to see the
world in a way that to him was "not good".
You can fool yourself all you want into thinking that your view of "the world"
is objective and not dependant on your languaculture (Agar), but it is, and so
are your analogies.
Arlo
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