Re: MD Rump Roast

From: Erin (macavity11@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Sep 26 2005 - 03:12:12 BST

  • Next message: Scott Roberts: "Re: MD Rump Roast"

    Scott, DMB, all
     
    I just read something recently that reminded of the stove example.....
     
    "There appears to be a developmental progression in reactions to pain. For example, a newborn infant who has her heel prikced for a blood test responds with distress, but it takes her several seconds to show the response. In contrast, only a few months later, the same procedure brings a much more immediate response. It is possible that the delayed reaction in infants is produced by the relatively slower transmission of information within the newborn's less developed nervous system"

    Also I had read there is the thermal grill phenomenon....where you warm and cold pipes are intertwined but it feels painfully hot when touched.
     
    It just really made wonder about Pirsig's conclusion about pain and the stove....I'm not so sure I'm as convinced.
     
    Erin
     

    david buchanan <dmbuchanan@hotmail.com> wrote:
    Scott and all MOQers:

    dmb explained Dignaga's two categories of cognition:
    At the risk of insulting your intelligence, I'd like to point out that these
    two categories of experience roughly correspond to Pirsig's static/Dynamic
    split, with "pure sensation" being the primary empirical reality or Dynamic
    Quality and "creative judgment" being the static patterns left in the wake.

    Scott replied:
    If you sit on a hot stove and immediately jump off, hasn't a biological
    judgment been carried out? Pure sensation doesn't get you off the stove,
    rather, some sort of biological judgment (call it instinct?) that excessive
    heat is going to damage your biological integrity is what got you off. In
    other words, the hot stove example is a case of the sensation of excessive
    heat acting as a sign to the biological system. Furthermore, pain exists
    only because it provides this signalling function. The same goes for all
    other so-called "pure sensations". It is only human fancy that can come up
    with the concept of a pure sensation. In actual experience they are all
    signs.

    dmb answers:
    The linguistics of biological sensations? Semiotic butts? Sorry Scott, but I
    just don't get you at all. I think you've combined some kind of Pierceian
    pragmaticism with conventional physiological explanations of experience.
    This makes no sense to me. Part of the problem here is that you have taken
    Dignaga's "pure sensation" as if he were a Modern Western philosopher, as if
    he were talking about the biological senses. I'd say you're off the mark by
    an entire hemisphere and nearly a thousand years. As Pirsig points out with
    respect to the hot stove example, those anatomical explanations are an
    intellectual description that comes afterward. He also points out that
    mystics would get off the stove before the intellectuals, which is a
    humorous way of saying the same thing.

    However, I'm glad you saw my latest post in the "Rhetoric" thread. I think
    Richard Hayes (University of New Mexico) has written some stuff that might
    prove to be quite effective in defeating some things you've been saying. I
    think your response means that you've noticed that too.

    Did you notice the bit about the modular self as it relates to Nagarjuna's
    EMPTINESS, for example? I think it contradicts what you've been saying about
    Nagarjuna. Maybe you'll take another look at my post with that in mind.

    I'd encourage you to take a look at his paper titled, "Did Buddhism
    Anticpate Pragmatism?" Pierce and Dignaga are both featured in it. Fair
    warning; Hayes answers his own question in the negative and pretty much
    shows that these guys would have hated each other. But it would be a
    philosophical kind of hate, which, according to Plato, is the highest form
    of hate. ;-)

    Thanks,
    dmb

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