From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Dec 05 2005 - 02:28:05 GMT
>From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@cpr.org>
>To: <dmbuchanan@hotmail.com>
>Subject: FW: MD Language, SOM, and the MoQ
>Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 19:22:44 -0700
>
>Matt and all MOQers:
>
>Matt said:
>...The place I would like to focus on is in the beginning of Lila when
>Pirsig describes mysticism and logical positivism. Roughly, Pirsig says
>that the logical positivists think that (some) language can capture reality
>perfectly well, we just have to iron out when and where (yes with rocks, no
>with values), and that the mystics think that language can't capture at
>all.
> Language takes you further away from reality, not closer...
>
>dmb says:
>Actually, Pirsig says the mystic objection is that "thought" takes you
>further away, not "language". He says that the postivists and the mystics
>reject metaphysics "for completely opposite reasons", not because they
>share
>a "common presupposition". I'll even argue that the postivisits are talking
>about "reality" in two completely different ways. In other words, I think
>you're misreading this section of Lila...
>
>Matt continued:
>...I said earlier that both the idea that language can span the gap between
>us and reality and the idea that it _can't_ take part in the pathos of
>distance. Both have as a common presupposition the idea that there is a
>_gap_ between us and reality and both have suggestions about how to span
>that gap (through language on the one hand and direct mystical experience
>on
>the other). When Pirsig says that, since both logical positivism and
>mysticism eschew metaphysics, metaphysics might be the place to mend the
>two
>together, to split the difference between the two, I think Pirsig takes on
>as conceptual baggage that common assumption: there is a distance.
>
>dmb says:
>Beyond the often repeated point that the distinction between language or
>thought and mystical experience does not constitute a such a gap and
>asserts
>no such distance, this is where I'll add the point that the postivists and
>the mystics are talking about two different realities, so to speak...
>
>"The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called
>"Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality
>(DQ)
>doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of
>definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to
>intellectual abstractions."
>
>By contrast, the positivists were concerned with "the natural sciences" and
>"scientific observation", with the static world of definitions. And this
>same point also underlines the often repeated point. The mystic says that
>thought (language) takes you away from reality because they are talking
>about an experience that is prior to definitions and distinct from that
>mode
>of experience. Again, this is a distinction between two kinds of
>experience,
>not between appearance and reality, us and reality. Its a distinction
>between two kinds of reality.
>
>Matt continued:
>...Pirsig leads us towards that eschewment when he tells us, following
>James
>and others, that experience _is_ reality, but I don't think he goes far
>enough in the erasure of the pathos of distance with his descriptions of
>language's function. ...Language neither does nor does not capture
>experience. Language isn't in the capturing business. Language is a tool
>that we use to deal with reality, with our experience. If we make this
>turn
>fully from language-as-a-mirror (or pirate) to language-as-a-tool, if we
>fully get rid of representationalism, I think we will want to get rid of
>the
>idea of a "pre-intellectual experience."
>
>dmb says:
>I think its clear that Pirsig has already thoroughly rejected the
>correspondence theory of truth and has done so without getting rid of the
>idea of the pre-intellectual experience. In fact, one could make a case
>that
>he has rejected the representational paradigm in order to INCLUDE the
>pre-intellectual experience, not to get rid of it. And I'd like to know
>what
>makes you believe that rejecting representationalism means adopting the
>language-as-a-tool stance. Not only do I fail to see how rejecting one is
>followed by adopting the other, I think the language-as-a-tool stance is a
>kind of amoral functionalism that is profoundly at odds with the Pirsigian
>picture. This tool theory only asks what the purpose is and how well that
>purpose is served, but not whether the purpose is worthy or meaningful or
>moral. It perpetuates the genetic defect in our rationality in that it is
>"emotionally hollow" and "spiritually empty" despite having rejected
>representationalism. By adopting the language-as-a-tool stance, you have
>un-solved this problem.
>
>As I understand it, Pirsig adopts the we-are-suspended-in-language stance
>in
>order to assert the point the our intellectual understanding of things not
>only SHOULD be derived within the context of human values and human
>purposes, but that it necessarily MUST do so insofar as all our
>intellectual
>descriptions have and evolutionary relationship with the social level,
>where
>language and human meaning originate. In the MOQ, we are suspended in
>static
>patterns of value, in a matrix of human meaning. In the MOQ these patterns
>are not instruments with which we deal or cope with reality, they are
>reality.
>
>Finally, let me expand on an idea I addressed in the last installment on
>this thread. This thread began as a response to an assertion I made, one
>that has not yet been addressed; "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." And hopefully you recall that
>I
>tried to explain what this difference was, that an "unknowable realm", like
>a Kantian realm of things-in-themselves, is not to be confused with "an
>experience that can't be captured", like a Pirsig's primary empirical
>reality. On the way to looking for something entirely different, I found
>some help where I never expected it, from Fichte by way of Wilber. This
>might get this same idea across. Its from Wilber's SEX, ECOLOGY,
>SPIRITUALITY: The Spirit of Evolution.
>
>"The first thing Fichte did was attempt to break the hold of formal
>rationality by demolishing Kant's 'thing-in-itself'. If, as Kant had said,
>the thing-in-itself can never in any way be known, then, said Fichte, it
>doesn't exist. In its place he substituted the power of the productive
>imagination of the infinite and supra-individual Self, which in essence
>meant; it is not that there is some forever unknowable thing-in-itself,
>quite different from consciousness, that impinges on consciousness and
>'causes' perception; it is rather that there is only one dynamic Life
>process that knows itself in various degree and from various angles. The
>world knows itself in various ways, and in orderto do so it cuts itself up,
>so to speak, into finite subject and finite object - but both subject and
>object issue from that same ground, so their apparent incompatibility is
>never ultimate, and the ground can be recovered in pure nondual
>perception."
>
>I'd be happy to point out the similarities between Pirsig and Fichte here
>if
>you like, but I suppose its easy enough to see for yourself.
>
>Does that help?
>
>Thanks,
>dmb
>
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