From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 22:40:36 GMT
DMB,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to let you continue to speculate as to why I
want to "give up" on the conversation. I mean, I've given my reasons:
arguments at this point are fairly useless (which you seem to understand in
some sense), we've been at it a while so why not give it a rest for a bit,
we've gone in a circle and I have nothing new to say, you don't like the
face I put on for the MD, I don't like your's, etc. I even said where I
think we'd have to focus to move forward, i.e. making explicit our implicit
potted genealogies of philosophy, but you don't want to do that, which makes
predictable sense given the philosophical stance I think you've taken.
You think "we've actually made some progress" (which I can agree with to a
certain extent) by figuring out where we'll disagree. But maybe the reason
I'm tired after reaching this point is because I've been circling this same
point for at least two years as the point that we'll probably disagree, and
I've been fielding arguments and such designed to address that point for the
same length. My claim for some time about Pirsig has been, "I think Pirsig
sounds like an essentialist and a pragmatist. Here's where he sounds like
an essentialist ______ , here's where he sounds like a pragmatist ______ .
I'm not sure which he is at heart, which he'd give up if pressed (I suspect
essentialism if pressed by a skeptic, pragmatism if pressed by a relativist,
but that still doesn't help when figuring out which he is at heart), but as
far as I can see you can't put the two together. _If_ he is an
essentialist, _if_ we _treat_ him as an essentialist (which looks like this
_____ ), then I would say this about that...(with the bringing out of
appropriate arguments and passages from Pirsig himself)." To my mind,
you've outed yourself as an essentialist. And I've deployed a lot of
arguments already. So until I can think of something new to deploy to help
you understand what the problem is, I have nothing else really to say but
what I've already said. Which I'll say again.
DMB said:
I guess I still don't understand the point or purpose of talking about
"vocabularies".... Until then, if its within your capabilities, I'd ask you
to either explain it or give it up and instead use concepts that make sense
to the average person.
Matt:
I asked my girlfriend if she understood the basic gist if I opposed "the
vocabulary of common sense" to "the vocabulary of physics." She thought
about it briefly, and said, "Yeah, its like the difference between a
specialist's terminology and the way we talk normally." I asked her if she
could think of an example of the difference between those two vocabularies.
She thought again, but couldn't really think of anything, so I coached her,
"Well, how about the difference between calling _that_," and I pointed at
her chair, "a _chair_ and calling it a cloud of electrons?" She said, yeah,
that makes sense.
The point is that using the "vocabulary vocabulary" is the same as using the
vocabulary of common sense or the vocabulary of physics. It takes practice,
you need to be taught it, just like any other language. It took her five
minutes to understand what I meant by "vocabulary." When I first was
reading Rorty, it took me about two tries to understand what he prima facie
meant by "vocabulary." I told my girlfriend, though, that there may yet be
philosophical problems with splitting a difference between "common sense"
and "physics." So there may be. But she understood what I meant. So I'll
give you three more examples before I quit trying to coach you. One, the
difference between the vocabulary of common sense and the vocabulary of
physics is the difference between calling it a "chair" and a "cloud of
electrons." Two, the difference between the vocabulary of physicalism and
Pirsig's vocabulary of pre-conditional valuation is the difference between
saying "A causes B" and "B values precondition A." The chair/cloud of
electrons doesn't care whether you call it a "chair" or "cloud of electrons"
and neither does A nor B care whether you say one causes the other or one
values the precondition of the other. Third (and here's where things get a
little more interesting), the difference between the vocabulary of Christian
mysticism and that of Buddhist mysticism is that in the former their
descriptions of the mystical experience use the word "God" a lot and in the
latter their descriptions use "Nothingness" or "Emptiness."
DMB said:
Firstly, I do not see how the neurological explanation can be seen as
anything other than reductionist, which I thought you were opposed to. Can
you explain how such a description escapes from reductionism?
Matt:
I can't help your imagination here, DMB. This is all I got, from before: "A
description is only reductionistic if it adds, after the details of the
description, 'this is how things really are.' This is not how non-reductive
physicalists describe things. They say, 'Here's a description of a table in
terms of molecules' or 'Here's a description of an experience in terms of
firing neurons.'" In the sense of "reductionism" you are using (where you
can't see how a neurological explanation could _not_ be reductionistic) a
neurological explanation is as reductionistic as your mystical explanation.
But that means every explanation and description is as reductionistic as any
other. There's a point there (about the malleability of language and the
wealth of imagination human civilization has shown), but that's not what I'm
talk about. Case]
It seems to me that quantum physics confirms what we see in Macroworld: That
is there is plenty of uncertainty, so chose your metaphors carefully because
anything can happen.
Scott:
I don't follow. What does this have to do with attempting to explain
perception with the products of perception?
Case continued:
I see no connection between quantum physics and perception in what you have
said other than that you say they are connected. I do see that by our nature
we access our senses sequentially and memory only fudges the problem by
allowing us to randomly access the past sequentially. The fact that we
experience things sequentially does not make them sequential
Scott:
So we agree that there is non-spatio-temporal reality "behind" the
spatio-temporal that we sense? So I am asking: why attempt to explain
sensing in terms of the products of sensing? Or memory (that is, why attempt
to explain it as spatio-temporal neural activity)?
Case continued:
I see that our conceptions are shaped by our perceptions but whether the
spatio-temporal exists when we perceive it or not, has little to do with
whether it continues to exist when we don't. What's more we don't even have
to be conscious for all of this interaction to take place. Besides, I was
not aware that physicists had settled on the number of dimensions so I don't
see how any of this is relevant.
Scott:
Well, we know that the perceptual dimensions do not exist "outside" of
perception, since relativity and QM shows that they break down at the
extremes (very fast and very small). The only reason for thinking that they
do is by ignoring the Munchhausen fallacy.
Case continued:
But all of that aside for a second, are you or Barfield suggesting that
human consciousness is not dependant on brain activity of any kind?
Scott:
Yes and no. The difference between me and the materialist is on the question
of whether normal waking human consciousness is produced by brain activity
or whether it is regulated by brain activity. I go with the latter, that the
brain's role in human consciousness is to keep the senses aligned with each
other and with thinking in order to operate in a spatiotemporal manner.
Though here again, one must understand that the brain that we see (and
study), like everything else, is just the spatio-temporal sign of a complex
set of non-spatio-temporal SPOV. It is possible (that is, I see no reason to
reject the possibility) that human consciousness could operate in other
modes, without a brain, which is to say, it could survive death (though
whether one wants to call that 'human' or not is up in the air). I don't
know that it does, I just see no metaphysical reason to reject the
possibility.
[Scott]
What this implies is that the contents of sense perception are signs of the
non-spatio-temporal reality we know (partially) as the quantum world, just
as the physical (spatio-temporal) sounds and figures we call speech and
writing are signs of concepts, which are also non-spatio-temporal -- which
are, I would say, the temporal buffers you refer to. The amoeba reacts to
vinegar, not because there is a mechanical series of chemical reactions, but
because there is a non-spatio-temporal "amoebic intellect/consciousness",
which we call instinct, and which includes the habit (the temporal buffer,
the concept, the SPOV) of moving away in this situation. (Note: this last
sentence is speculative -- it is a possible redescription, made possible
once one has overcome the Munchhausen fallacy.)
[Case]
While signs and concepts may help us communicate with others or to solve
problems they are a hindrance when the actual living needs to be done. They
guide us into the future by pointing to the past. Their main value is gives
us a static edge against the dynamic future.
Since the amoeba's behavior can be entirely explained as a series of
chemical reactions. It hard to see what "amoebic intellect/consciousness"
adds to our understanding. Once again there is no habit involved. There is
not even the possibility of habit forming in a amoeba.
Scott:
This is more 'tis/'taint. I don't see how either of us can demonstrate our
respective positions strictly in terms of observing amoebae. My talk of
habits (borrowed from Peirce) is a way of redescribing biological data based
on a rejection of the materialism on which your descriptions are based.
[Scott]
Anyway, that's the basis of what you call weirdness, and I would appreciate
if these arguments were addressed rather than simply dismissed as 'weird'
and 'nutty'. And in this vein I would like to add one thing. In another post
there was this exchange.
[Case]
It is just a matter of personal taste I suppose but I would rather hear you
trashing Wolfram than praising some obscure dude whose work is out of print.
Excuse me.
Scott:
I must have missed something. Who is Wolfram? Also, some of Barfield's books
are in print, including "Saving the Appearances".
[Mike]
The second, closely related, point of disagreement lies in your (Scott's)
claim that "to say of some process that it is intelligent is meaningless
unless there is value involved, and to say there is value involved is
meaningless unless there is awareness involved, and a process that involves
choosing among possibilities based on estimating consequences."
[Case]
There is a house of cards waiting for a gentle breeze.
Scott said:
Could you waft that breeze my way so I can see what is so fragile about my
house of cards?
[Case]
You are piling infinitives on top of prepositional phrases pasted together
with conjunctions to threaten us with meaninglessness if we underestimate
the consequences of random possibilities. With that kind of logic you could
convince someone that they think like a tree. Oh wait...
Scott:
What argument does not consist of infinitives and prepositional phrases etc?
Also, I didn't use the word 'random', nor 'underestimating'. If you like,
I'll rephrase that last clause: "a process that involves choosing among
different possibilities of action according to the expected consequences of
those actions". Is that better? So I ask again: what is wrong with my
argument?
- Scott
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Matt:
DMB said:
Matt:
DMB said in his other little post:
Matt:
Matt
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: Wed Nov 09 2005 - 04:54:03 GMT
agree with it or like it or anything. I just what you to comprehend what
I'm trying to say.
Well, now you've totally taken all the sting out of your epithet and it
seems silly to use it. Using "blindspot" in this sense is just saying that
I have a gap in my knowledge base, in what I'm familiar with. But that's
like me saying that you have a blindspot to contemporary Western philosophy
(or more), both of us (probably) have a blindspot to the rules of cricket,
most people (except the fair people at Oscar Meyer) have a blindspot when it
comes to making hot dogs, and _everybody_ has a blindspot when it comes to
what its like to be a tiger (since "what its like" requires us to adopt the
first-person viewpoint and no one can ever do that). The trouble with your
epithet now is that I've never claimed to be familiar with Eastern
philosophy or mysticism. I've always acknowledged the fact that this is an
area I'm lacking in. And I know that to gain a fuller understanding of what
Pirsig is up to I will have to broaden my grasp of Eastern philosophy. I've
never denied that either. However, just as much as I do agree that, to have
a good grasp on what Pirsig is doing, you need to know some Buddhism, I also
think its obvious that people need to know some Western philosophy. I'm
mining one vein in Pirsig, but there are many others. I don't think I'm
mucking up the other veins, but as much as you think that my mining of the
Western philosophical angle has led me to distort Pirsig, I think you're
distorting Pirsig because you neglect it.
And the lack of deviation from this "vocabulary" talk seems to entail a
strange sort of preformative contradiction. I mean, if you have an array of
vocabularies available and can select the right one for the right occasion,
then why oh why can't you use one that won't confuse and frustrate the hell
out of me. Why oh why don't use one that I can actually understand?
Oh silly, that doesn't follow. If it did, then you wouldn't be able to say
that I need to learn some Buddhism. Just because a person doesn't know a
vocabulary doesn't mean that the vocab they don't know still isn't the best
one for the job. It just means they don't know it. Just because you don't
own a hammer doesn't mean that a hammer wouldn't work better then a crowbar.
You and Rorty want to "restrict" what counts as valid in a way that seems
very UN-pragmatic.
Nah, that's just a premature judgment on your part because you admittedly
don't understand what I'm talking about. My talk about validity being
contextualized in traditions ("traditions" being another very simple idea
you don't understand) is part of the move against a theory/practice
distinction that you seem to want to get out from under, too. I just don't
think you've made it yet.
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