From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sat Nov 01 2003 - 21:13:17 GMT
Hi Scott
This is interesting because unusually I disagree with you.
Scott: By "inside" and "outside" I am referring to the fact that in sense
> perception I experience things that seem to be not me, while in thinking
I
> experience things that seem to be me. Pirsig does not pay attention to the
> existence of those two very different kinds of seeming, in effect assuming
> that one (sense perception) is basic, and the other an illusion (note that
I
> am referring to the *seeming* as illusory, not the actual thinking). Hence
> my accusation of nominalism, and that by ignoring the two types of seeming
> he is not being empirical.
David M: I think this me/not-me distinction needs unpacking. There is
certainly
a distinction between what I can will to respond/have agency with all the
time,
i.e. my body, but my car can also start to feel like a body when I drive it
so much.
People with artificial limbs controlled by brain waves have certainly
reported feeling
like they became part of their body, and in a way we can gain agency over
anything
in our environment with the necessary energy/tools. Sure you can lay cliam
to your thoughts
but I often feel like they are something that flow through me and are
connected in ways
that I cannot entirely account for in terms of any sort of progression. It
seems hard to say that
we cause thinking or if thinking just happens to us, is thinking ours or is
it a gift from out
of nothing/transcendence? I certainly see thinking/perception as entirely
enmeshed, do you
really think Pirsig gives priority to perception?
Quality=reality=expereience. And this is as much stuff-in-the-
world as it is stuff-in-your-head. Head-experience-world are pretty
inseperable I suggest.
Sure, Pirsig has a go about thinking as reasoning, becuase a lot of what we
experience is very
spontaneous and has little to do with deliberating-thinking. But I think the
whole of perception/the body
exhibit vast amounts of intelligence, otherwise of course you would not see
a thing. Merleau-Ponty is
very very good on this. I think your argument with Pirsig is because
sometimes he is using a narrow
sense of thinking as theory-deliberate-thinking and you want to talk about
the broader intelligence-perception-
thinking. Surely primitive man has onlt the one type of
particpatory-seeming, and this is what Pirsig is getting
at when he says quality, quality begins with primordial non-distinguished
reality, pretty hard for any of us
to get with thse days, deep meditation seems the best way, dropping all your
presuppositions is very hard,
Heidegger, for me, pushes hardest in this direction.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott R" <jse885@spinn.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: MD Self-consciousness
> David,
>
>
> > Scott (I think):Nevertheless, this attitude seems to me to more than a
> > little
> > nominalist, since it looks to that which comes from the outside as
> > privileged over that which comes from the inside.
> >
> > What is this outside/inside distinction, reality=quality=experience
> > we experience, there is no inside or outside, it is outsideless.
> > We can create a theoretical cosmic story but we can not
> > experience anything outside of experience, I suggest, pretty
> > obvious really.
>
> By "inside" and "outside" I am referring to the fact that in sense
> perception I experience things that seem to be not me, while in thinking
I
> experience things that seem to be me. Pirsig does not pay attention to the
> existence of those two very different kinds of seeming, in effect assuming
> that one (sense perception) is basic, and the other an illusion (note that
I
> am referring to the *seeming* as illusory, not the actual thinking). Hence
> my accusation of nominalism, and that by ignoring the two types of seeming
> he is not being empirical.
>
> - Scott
>
>
>
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