From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 20 2005 - 03:00:07 GMT
Matt and all:
Matt said to dmb:
I'm not surprised by your reaction, but I just don't think you understand
what I'm saying. Which is fine, my fault, I just don't know how else to
catch you up to speed.
dmb says:
Actually, I think this post, your "Language, SOM, and the MoQ" post and my
own reading on the side have gone pretty far toward getting me "up to
speed". When you slow down and spell things out, as you've tried to do here,
is very helpful. Your lastest offerings have confirmed my hunch that
applying your Rortarian critiqe of the MOQ is wildly inappropriate and
unworkable. Its also pretty clear that your approach really does entail
constantly changing the subject away from mysticism and otherwise excluding
DQ from from the playing field. Maybe you did not intend to make these
confessions, but there it is.
Matt said to dmb:
...The problem you have yet to face is that once it makes itself complete,
you can't complain that the vocabulary in question "leaves something out."
It doesn't. It explains it, but it does it in its own terms. You may not
like those terms. Perfectly fair. Those terms may not allow you to do
something you'd like to do. Again, perfectly fair. But you can't say it
doesn't account for them because the only way to say that was if you could
compare vocabularies to how things, experience or reality or whatever, were
in and of themselves. Only if you had a standpoint outside of any particular
vocabulary to which you could use to determine each particular vocabulary's
adequacy to experience or reality. Otherwise, you're simply insisting on
your particular vocabulary to describe a given thing, that the other
vocabulary "doesn't get it." That's fine, too. A neurological vocabulary
will never help with Eastern enlightenment. Fine. The only way to "get"
Eastern enlightenment is to use something like a mystic's vocabulary. That
makes perfect sense to me. But that doesn't mean that the neurological
vocabulary is inadequate. It just means it won't help you for that purpose.
dmb says:
If the neurological vocabulary can't get at enlightenment experience and
won't help in describing it, then why can't we say it is inadequate? I'd say
"inadequate" is a perfectly adequate description of something that can't do
the job, wouldn't you? But that is a relatively minor point compared with
your larger point about "adequacy". This is where I think you are
inappropriately applying your critique of representationalism to the MOQ and
just about everything I try to say about it...
You say "the only way to" assert one description over another is to "compare
vocabularies to how things, experience or reality or whatever, were in and
of themselves."
You say that asserting one description over another is possible "only if you
had a standpoint outside of any particular vocabulary to which you could use
to determine each particular vocabulary's adequacy to experience or
reality."
As I understand it, here you are denying the possibility of an objective
standard, that we have access to reality "in and of" itself. But I'm not
making any such claims about the exclusive, objective truth of my assertions
about anything and the MOQ, as everyone knows, rejects this very thing. We
all agree that rejecting SOM is rejecting representaltionalims, right? I
mean, the idea of subjects having correct knowledge about the objective
world is the representational view and the whole point of the MOQ is to
overturn that, right? I think we agree on this much and the problem arises
during the next step, in what we take to be the consequences of that
rejection, the point and purpose of that rejection.
Does rejecting the representational theory of truth mean that we can have no
truth at all? Does the lack of an absolute certainty really mean it all
just come down to rival vocabularies? Does the rejection of SOM mean the
death of philosophy, where we can only have an ironic metaphysics? These are
the conclusions you seem to draw from the rejection of the mirror-of-nature
theory of truth, but I don't. And naturally I think Pirsig takes things in a
different direction too.
Anyway, here another example of you treating my statements as if I were
making them from an SOM perspective, from within the representational theory
of truth...
DMB had said:
Surely anyone can see the difference between an unknowable realm that can
never be experienced directly and an experience that can't be captured in
words? The first can never be known directly while the second can only be
known directly.
Matt replied:
See, this is the type of thing I'm trying to avoid. I'm not avoiding the
experience, though I am trying to avoid the theoretical imputation that it
_can't_ be captured in words. Afterall, how do you know that? Wouldn't
that be running together your carefully distinguished inexpressibility with
noumenal ineffability? ...I'm trying to avoid the idea that _words_ are in
the business of _capturing_. I think that's a remenant of the
representationalism that you say Pirsig eschews fully. I don't know yet....
dmb says:
You've focused on the word "capture" to construe my comments as SOMish. That
is not only one of the weakest and thinnest of arguments, it is an argument
that fails to acknowledge the actual content of my remarks. I was making a
distinction between intellectual abstractions about realities beyond our
experience on the one hand and actual experience on the other. I'm not
making any claims about getting beyond such limits to reach the absolute
truth, I'm saying there is no reality beyond experience. There is no realm
of things in themselves. Reality is experience and experience is reality in
the MOQ, right? You might recall that this whole thing began with my making
a distinction between categories of experience, not between experience and
reality. So I think its just a cheap trick to focus on the word "capture".
It only evades the point, which is that you're confusing Pirsig's DQ with a
Kantian realm of things-in-themselves. You keep glossing over this point as
if I haven't been making it. You keep unmaking the distinction with phrases
like, "things, experience or reality or whatever, were in and of
themselves." And in the next one you use the phrase, "experience or reality"
in that same dismissive way, which then leads you to the Rortarian critique
and off the topic once again...
Matt continued:
You, me, and Paul all think that thinking of language as trying to represent
or capture experience or reality is a bad idea, but I'm not sure if Pirsig
fully got himself out from under that rock. ...because I see so many people
like yourself draw out implications from Pirsig, implications that don't
look wrong, stuff that has textual support, and these implications move in
the direction of my worst philosophical fears, that of essentiatlism and
representationalism, rather than towards my highest philosophical hopes,
pragmatism.
dmb says:
When we add this constant, and seemingly deliberate, misreading to the
weakness of assertions like "these implications move in the direction of"
and "the sentiment is there" - well, it doesn't add up to much if you ask
me. But in the name of conversational progress, let me focus on the whole
sentence to make my point. You said that we "all think that thinking of
language as trying to represent or capture experience or reality is a bad
idea, but I'm not sure if Pirsig fully got himself out from under that
rock." As I understand it, the MOQ is a form of radical empiricism. In the
MOQ, experience is the ultimate authority and defines the limits of reality.
That's what makes the Kantian noumenal realm disappear. If it is not
experienced, it does not exist. It exists as an abstract idea, but its just
one of those empty categories, a theory with no basis in experience. Of
course the MOQ rejects the representational or correspondance theory of
truth, but it certainly does NOT assert any such epistemological gap between
experience and language. Again, we are just talking about different kinds of
experience, different levels of experience. Your suggestion that the MOQ is
leaning toward representationalism or essentialism, as I understand these
things, would be like suggesting that Jackson Pollack leans toward
representationalism. It only makes me wonder how long its been since you've
read Pirsig's books or seen Pollack's paintings. This little phrase,
"experience or reality" wouldn't be much to complain about if you weren't
also quite explicit about confusing that unknowable Kantian realm with a
category of experience....
Matt continued:
...So the idea behind my avoidance plan for representationalism is that we
not disjoin knowing from knowledge, knowing from linguistic use, but that we
also stop thinking of language as trying to capture anything. It was only
when we thought of language as trying to capture adequately bits of reality
or experience (the Kantian Thing-in-Itself, experience or reality as it is
aside from our descriptions of it) and these bits as being more or less
capturable (rocks more so, mystical experiences less so) that we catch
ourselves in problems.
dmb says:
See, you've taken a leap that I'm not willing to make. Its one thing to
realize that our words don't simply reflect a pregiven reality. Its quite
another to say that language can't "capture anything" or that language
shouldn't or can't agree with experience. Even the mystical experience. The
idea here is simply that this experience is intellectually unknowable and
beyond intellectual definitions. But we can describe it. We can talk about
what it is NOT. And if you recall, this thread began with an assertion about
the kind of language that is and is not good for such descriptions.
You keep responding with something like, "the experience is ineffable. That
means we can't talk about it. And since truth is determined within language
practices, the ineffable is off the table."
But from my MOQ perspective, that's just a re-assertion of the problem
Pirsig set out to tackle in the first place. The problem is a limited
rationality with exclusive standards of intellectual truth. What you've
proposed is limited and exclusive in a way that's differs from SOM's
objectivity, but in terms of its blindness to mysticism there is no
difference. It unsolves the problem.
And besides that, you keep exaggerating the nature of "ineffability" as if
ineffable experiences could never be described or expressed in any way, as
if there weren't already ten thousand names for it, as if there were no
myths or religions that express it. To say that this experience can't be
captured in words is just a way of saying that mystical experience shouldn't
be confused with or reduced to intellectual concepts or fixed definitions,
with the "things" of sensory experience. To say that this experience is
ineffable is just a way of saying that this is a category of experience that
can't be judged in those terms or held to those standards, that it has to be
known on its own terms, so to speak. To say this experience is ineffable is
to say it is intellectually unknowable, which is like saying you can't know
shakesphere's plays by measuring their weight and volume. You may recall
that I have already mentioned epistemological pluralism several (million)
times in this thread.
This next one could be fruitful, and then maybe I'll respond to the rest in
another post...
Matt said:
This is a conversational problem. It either ends with the mystical
dogmatist shrugging his shoulders, smiling, and saying, "Well, you'll know
it when you see it," at which point there's nothing else to say because the
conversant is hopeless or with the pragmatist shaking his head and saying,
"Well, maybe we should just try not to talk about that stuff, or really, in
that way. Afterall, talk won't help. Maybe we should just concentrate on
the linguistic pile when it comes to conversation." This has the effect of
changing the subject. But why should this be a problem for a mystic?
Afterall, what's the point of talking about something that is inexpressible?
Whatever "knowing directly" is, it can't be shared with other people. The
pragmatist reaction is just that maybe we should fix up the rules of the
conversation so that we don't get stuck in those kinds of cul-de-sacs.
dmb says:
Yes, this has the effect of changing the subject, which is rather large
conversational problem in its own right. See, you wish to avoid it, you
insist that talk won't help, you describe it in terms of witch doctors with
their colored demons or in terms of the neurological activity that seems to
be ASSOCIATED with it. You actually seem kind of desperate about trying to
explain it all away. Your man Rorty is on record saying that the sublime
isn't real, that nothing beyond language really exists. And yet you still
want to insist that your brand of pragmatism DOESN"T exclude this category
of experiences?
Of course it does. Obviously it does. In effect, you want to fix up the
rules so that it's excluded from the conversation. By contrast, Pirsig
rejects the correspondence theory of truth because he wants to expand
rationality so that mysticism is NOT excluded from the conversation. See,
you don't just have an alternative interpretation or variation of the MOQ,
your project is directly at odds with the MOQ in a very big way here. Again,
you've UNsolved the problem. From this perspective, your brand of pragmatism
is not an improvement over SOM at all. In terms of Pirsig's aim to include
this category of experience within his metaphysical system, your brand
pragmatism is just as bad as SOM. They both exclude it.
If your aim is to exclude "mere" metaphysics from the conversation, which is
to exclude assertions about realities that are beyond experience and for
which there is no evidence, then I'm with you. And like you, I'd be
unimpressed with any assertion based on nothing more than a shrugging
"you'll know it when you see it" attitude. But I don't think you have to be
enlightened to understand what I'm saying. This is just metaphysics, not God
talking. Its enough to accept the reports and explanations of those who have
experience in this area, just like anything else. Even if the descriptions
in Pirsig's books were the only thing you ever read or heard about
mysticism, it should be enough to at least get started on the topic. If you
didn't insist on changing the subject to the Rortain critique, and otherwise
excluding from the conversation, we'd likely be well into the substance of
the matter by now, but NooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo.
Matt said:
I'm skipping over the Platonic nonsense of "Heaven is this world, rightly
seen" (afterall, isn't "rightly seen" the wrong phrasing for someone who
can't imagine anyone thinking absolute certainty is even possible? Only if
you could cash in on if it was "right" or not would you use the phrase, and
the only way to cash in is if you had criteria to determine rightness, but
we don't have any criteria because such criteria was the pipe dream you
boggled at anybody in their right mind dreaming of) to focus on your quick
about-face on the everydayness of DQ.
dmb says:
I'm skipping over this fictional about-face to focus on your inapporiate
application of the Rortian critique to that little saying about Heaven.
(Interesting that you would have philosophical objections to "rightly seen"
rather than "Heaven".) Such a statement is not supposed to be treated as an
intellectual claim and we're miles away from any talk about the critera for
absolute certainty. Can we please just agree that nobody here is shooting
for absolute certainty about anything and just move on the conversation.
Dude, you're arguing with a bunch of dead religious fanatics who aren't here
and its just not relevant. I don't have to tell you that the MOQ's idea of
truth is lightyears away from any such grandiose notion and the critera for
intellectual truth is simple.
Matt focused:
...If I'm reading you right, you're saying that there are two kinds of DQ,
the everyday ordinariness and the mystic's inexpressible "rare moment." But
that means to me that you are still writing with the pathos of distance in
mind. I don't think that's good.
dmb replies:
Wrong on both counts. I'm not saying there are two kinds of DQ and I'm not
writing with the pathos of distance in mind. The only distances involved in
what I'm saying between one level of experience and another. And DQ is not
two kinds, special and ordinary or whatever, it is a CATEGORY of
experiences. It includes a whole range of experiences. The infant who has
not yet learned to interperpet experience in terms of the culture's static
patterns, the spontaneous inspiration that comes from art or nature, the
artist or craftsman who achieves a state of mind in his work, and the
enlightenment experience itself can all be put into this category. There is
a difference between the infant and the enlightened one because the infant
didn't have any static to overcome. The craftsmen and artists know how to
ride this experience better than the one's who are just lucky enough to be
inspired. And why shouldn't this category of experience be found everywhere
both sacred and profane? The idea is that Quality generates everything we
know, that its the primary empirical reality. Its the first thing we know
and everything follows from that.
Matt said:
Vocabularies don't rise and fall because they are adequate or inadequate to
experience or reality. They rise and fall because they are either useful or
not for our purposes.
dmb says:
Dude, we're talking about a metaphysical system. The whole point is the have
an adequate explanation or description of reality. Again, not adequate in
the sense of corresponding to objective reality but adequate in the sense of
able to do the job. In the case of this sort of intellectual truth, the
purpose is to come up with useful explanations of our experience, which is
the only reality we get.
Matt misleadingly said:
So again, is there lost wisdom in the ancients? Yeah. Would we be better
if we regained it? Likely. But are we going to capture that wisdom by
turning back the clock to ancient times? No. We're going to use their
wisdom for us, for our times.
dmb says:
Who said anything about turning back the clock or undoing the progess of the
West? Now you're just making shit up. Of course this recovery project is
"for our times".
DMB had said:
>It seems to me that interpreting the MOQ through this Rortian filter is
>quite unworkable and it would be much better and easier to simply admit
>that
>the MOQ is not for you.
>Matt replied:
>Actually, I think it much easier to say that _your_ philosophy isn't for
>me,
>and vice versa. I think Pirsig is great. When interpreting Pirsig, it is
>only when those interpretations butt heads does there become a problem with
>Pirsig, either with my version or with yours. It is when we interpret
>Pirsig that we try and establish what is "really central" from what isn't.
>Pirsig's fine, Pirsig's just the source material.
dmb says:
Naturally, I disagree. I don't think the lack of objective critera for truth
should lead us to conclude that its all just a matter of differing
conclusions. I think you've misinterpreted the MOQ and taken a few shared
insights to extremes. You've taken the idea that we are suspended in
language to mean that language is the only reality. I think that is quite
obviously incorrect as well as out of sync with the MOQ. You've taken the
rejection of correspondance theory of truth as a rejection of truth, period.
You've taken the rejection of the metaphysics of substance as a rejection
metaphysics, period. The only things that your pragmatism has in common with
the MOQ, those are wildly exaggerated in your version and those thin
connections are more easily found elsewhere.
Finally, Matt asked:
And how is my version unworkable? You _certainly_ haven't shown that. The
only thing you might have shown, with my help, is that our versions are
unworkable together.
dmb says:
Obviously, all I have is my interpretation, my point of view, But I do have
lots of textual support for my view while yours seems to be based on
sniffing out vague sentiments and leanings. its all between the lines and
the "sometimes-he-sounds-like" sort of hunches. Dude, that's so weak.
Basically, I think my postion is defensible and your is not. I thin that,
mostly, I get what the guy is saying and mostly you don't. Sorry. I know the
great philosophologist will take it as slander, but I think you've got too
many isms in your eyes to see what I saying, to see what Pirisig is saying.
I don't think you've ever really made a case so much as consistantly avoided
the issues by always changing the subject. I'd be happy to try to show how
your version is unworkable, but it basically comes down to that same old
complaint, that you want to take the Quality out of the MOQ and that this is
a total disaster as far the the MOQ goes. Like I said, I think your project
is totally at odds with Pirsig's aims. That you think this mysticism stuff
is NOT central to the MOQ, I think, demonstrates some major league
misconceptions about what Pirsig is up to.
Ooops. Now I really have to go.
More later. Thanks.
dmb
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 20 2005 - 13:58:10 GMT