From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Fri Mar 14 2003 - 07:29:46 GMT
Dear David B.,
In your posting of 1 Mar 2003 17:48:53 -0700 you refer me back to your
posting of 23 Feb 2003 14:43:13 -0700 for your solution of the mind/body
problem. There you wrote:
'the biological and social levels are distinctly different, but recall that
the main task of social level values is to control biology for a higher
purpose. Thus social level values, the great religions and mythologies all
have an intimate relationship with the body. Think of the way marriage and
morals keep a muzzle on our sex organs. Think of the way table manners and
dietary laws put a leash on our stomachs. Think of those one-handed theives.
Naturally, we'd see some similarities in the various cultures because each
culture is essentially working out the same problems with the same bodies.
But I think there's much more to it than that. I think
the common core is a reflection of the mystical experience. Since a direct
encounter with DQ is the letting go of all static patterns, it transcends
all language and culture. This experience is then translated imperfectly
into the static forms of the person's society. The experience is outside of
time and space, but the expression of it can only be of a particular time
and place. There's a reason that my claims that social values grow out of
both DQ and handling the problems with a common physiology in a common world
may seem paradoxical..'
According to you the social level involves thinking and consciousness. This
'controlling biology' and 'working out problems with bodies' would therefore
be done consciously and by thinking about how to do so, too. So your vision
on the relation between the biological level and your social level leaves
unanswered the question how consciousness and thinking can originate in a
brain that is not much different from an animal's brain, except for its
size.
As Pirsig formulates the problem in chapter 12 of 'Lila':
'When a subject-object metaphysics regards matter and mind as eternally
separate and eternally unalike, it creates a platypus bigger than the solar
system.
It has to make this fatal division because it gives top position in its
structure to subjects and objects. Everything has got to be object or
subject, substance or nonsubstance, because that's the primary division of
the universe. Inorganic-biological patterns are composed of "substance," and
are therefore "objective." Social-intellectual patterns are not composed of
"substance" and are therefore called "subjective." Then, having made this
arbitrary division based on "substance," conventional metaphysics then asks,
"What is the relationship between mind and matter, between subject and
object?"'
By making your social level a part of 'mind' (while still indicating the
biological level with 'body'), the division between the biological level and
your social level stays just as big and unbridgeable as the
subject/object-divide which Pirsig criticizes.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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