[MD] Language

[Mary]

Hi Steve,

Some comments inline.

On Behalf Of Steven Peterson
> Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2010 10:08 AM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Language
> 
> Hi DMB,
> 
> No response on this so I an reposting...
> 
> 
> > Steve said:
> > I was talking about the issue of language as something that ought to
> be transcended--whether a pragmatist ought to agree or disagree with
> the mystic who says that the fundamental nature of reality is out side
> of language. ... Perhaps you could try reading it again and tell me
> where I get all SOM on you. I don't see how since I was criticizing the
> Pirsigian notion of getting outside language as being an SOM idea about
> language intervening between a subject and an object as he did in his
> lens metaphor: "The culture in which we live hands us a set of
> intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and the concept of
> the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into these glasses.
> If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or,
> God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who
> still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat
> weird, if not actually crazy."
> >
> > I think he is using an SOM metaphor to attack SOM. What the heck
> could it mean to take the glasses off? Now he sees the world as it
> actually is instead of with SOM blinders? ...You are right that Rorty
> doesn't see any value in the notion of getting outside language. Nor do
> I, but I do recognize that Pirsig clearly does. I agree with Rorty,
> pace Pirsig, that the notion is incoherent once we drop the subject-
> object picture. While Pirsig sees the mystic as saying that the
> fundamental nature of reality is outside of language, Rorty is saying
> that that notion is incoherent unless you imagine reality in one hand,
> you on the other, and language as what James sarcastically called a
> tertium quid intermediate between the two. ...
> >
> >
> > dmb says:
> 
> > First of all, please notice that the SOM glasses interpret
> experience, not the world as it actually is. The idea of the world as
> it actually exists IS the idea of an objective world and that is what's
> built right into the glasses. It is the interpretation, not reality
> before it's interpreted.
> 
> Steve:
> It is a fair correction to my attack on the glasses metaphor when you
> say that what Pirsig is doing is not the same as the standard SOM lens
> metaphor, but I still think the SOM glasses bit (and probably every
> occular metaphor for knowledge) is just as problematic. You describe
> what's going on as reality before it is interpreted on the one hand
> and the interpretation on the other with the SOM lens as the tertium
> quid intermediate between the two. I think it amounts to pretty much
> the same thing as a lens intervening between a subject and an object.
> We still have (1) a description and (2) what is being described as
> well as some third thing standing in the way of making good
> descriptions.
> 
> The following is better since it at least drops the third thing:
> 
> Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can
> be described is a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the
> definitions emerge
> they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one
> can say
> correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and
> undefinable because
> definition never exhausts it. (RMP from LC)
> 
> Steve:
> I think it is good that you hint at talking about experience as
> interpretation and Pirsig in the above also does well to talk about
> experience as a process of interpretation (or definition or
> description). But when we are asked what it is that is being described
> we should hear the sound of one hand clapping. 
[Mary Replies] 
No.  Not one hand clapping.  Once you are aware to ask the question the DQ
has already turned into SQ.  Once it's SQ, the way you answer the question
depends on how you wield the analytical knife, and that will be SOM.

The glasses are not an intermediary third thing.  
1) There's some DQ but you don't know it because you're not aware of it yet.
2) You become aware of it, and it instantly turns to SQ because you are
aware of it.  It's NOT DQ anymore.
3) You categorize it with your SOM glasses, giving it a name and such.
 
Any answer would not be
> the answer. The next best thing to not answerring at all would be to
> just offer up some concept of conceptual emptiness (DQ) which Pirsig
> would admit is just one more interpretation and the advice to unask
> the question at best. Pirsig noted that from a mystic's perspective it
> is a bad question--that it would be best to keep quiet--and then he
> gives an answer anyway. By identifying his philosophy with mysticism,
> he is stuck in this paradox. So why identify with mysticism? The
> mystic reality is no better than the objective one as far as the
> problem that the positing of a reality that is beyond description is
> to offer a description of it as being beyond description. And at the
> same time, it is not beyond description because it is the only thing
> that is ever described. So Pirsig says that "one can say correctly
> that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable." At
> that point in one's understanding of the MOQ, isn't it better to say
> nothing at all about DQ?
> 
> 
> DMB:
> As you've construed it, we take off those SOM glasses and find
> ourselves looking at.... (wait for it, wait for it --- dramatic pause)
> ...the exact same thing we saw before we took off the glasses. I think
> it's pretty clear that this would be absurd. The whole point of taking
> off those glasses is to see things differently, of course, and that's
> where the next point comes in.
> 
> Steve:
> My view isn't that we take the glasses off and see exactly the same
> thing. My views is that there ought not be three separate terms here.
> Taking off the glasses ought to be an incoherent notion in Pirsig's
> metaphor if here is no Cartesian subject to be wearing the glasses.
> The subject is a collection of patterns of preferences and the glasses
> then are part of that collection of patterns. A person doesn't take
> them off and SEE something new. The person IS something new.
> 
> And this person taking off the glasses who has just rid herself of a
> particular collection of patterns of preferences is not now free from
> all patterns of preference. The person IS patterns of preferences. One
> pattern of preferences gets replaced by another hopefully better one.
> Removing all patterns of preferences (taking off all of our glasses)
> would be to unpeal an onion to the point where there is no human being
> left.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
1) No.  You are still there.  Everybody else can still see you, but you
would be considered as "somewhat
weird, if not actually crazy."
2) Just because you peel off all your glasses doesn't mean you disappear to
yourself either.  There's a difference between being able to "experience" DQ
and "being" DQ.  
> 
> DMB:
> > The trick to understanding the MOQ is in understanding what it
> actually means to claim that the fundamental reality is outside
> language.
> 
> Steve:
> Why do you always take me to be not understanding when I am
> disagreeing? I do understand the MOQ and I know Pirsig's philosophy
> includes the notion that the fundamental reality is outside reality. 
[Mary Replies] 
No!  "the fundamental reality is *outside reality*"????
1) There is no "fundamental reality" there is only DQ and SQ
2) We have a strong preference for SQ
I
> am saying that Pirsig was wrong--that he would have done better to not
> associate enlightenment with the notion of transcendence of language.
> 
> DMB:
> The first thing to do is tell yourself that this fundamental reality
> is NOT the objective reality, is NOT the world as it actually
> is....The fundamental reality he's talking about is DQ or pure
> experience. This is NOT a claim to have direct access to the world as
> it actually is because, again, that just an idea that's derived from
> experience, a conceptual interpretation of experience. The primary
> empirical reality is just experience itself, not experience OF
> things-in-themselves.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Correct.  There is no "world as it actually is"
> Steve:
> Yep, I understand all that to be what Pirsig is saying. Now, how
> exactly is it possible to be unenlightened in the sense of being out
> of touch with reality if reality is experience itself? What in this
> simple experience=reality picture needs to be transcended?
> 
[Mary Replies] 
SOM is what can be transcended.  The notion that everything is subjects and
objects.  That you are different from your surroundings.  That you, the
subject, Steve, is different from all the not-you objects.  That subjects
and objects are not the fundamental reality of the world, but that SQ can
instead be viewed as patterns of value.  Remember, DQ you will never 'see'
because by the time you are aware of DQ it has become SQ.

> Since we can never be out of touch with reality, then our only
> philosphical problem is a need for better descriptions. All
> transcendence in terms of language can mean is to bring some new good
> description into the world, and all that enlightenment can mean is the
> state of having really good interpretations that can easily be dropped
> when better ones become available.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
No.  Now you're just moving the puzzle pieces around on the table.  But
that's probably ok because as Pirsig says, it's all good.  The only thing we
can really know is that SQ CAN be seen as patterns of value rather than as
objects.  You see, if you stick with the SOM glasses all your life, you are
- by default - the center of your own private universe.  There's nothing
else you could possibly be.  If you quit presupposing a "you the subject"
observing "not-you the object", then a whole new range of possibilities
opens up.  Very liberating.  SOM is isolating.  The MoQ's SPOVs are NOT
isolating.
> 
> 
> DMB:
> In the MOQ, there are no things-in-themselves because, again, that is
> just one of the ideas built into the SOM glasses. Instead, the cutting
> edge of experience is not so much "outside" language as it is "prior"
> to the conceptualizations that quickly and habitually interpret it. In
> this immediate flux of life there are as yet no differentiations. The
> whole situation has a qualitative feel or an aesthetic charge, as in
> the hot stove example. By the time you realize the situation in terms
> of stoves and injured butts, you're looking at the situation through
> conceptualizations. These two kinds of experience, conceptual and
> pre-conceptual, work in tandem all day long whether we realize it or
> not.
>
[Mary Replies] 
Yeah, but that explanation doesn't get at the heart of the matter.  You have
yet to lose yourself.  You are still explaining everything in terms of you
the subject experiencing something not-you the object.
 
> Steve:
> So instead of outside/inside you are now preferring a distinction
> between the past and the present. And the SOM glasses are part of the
> present. Everything happens in the present--even refection on the
> past. You say that "In this immediate flux of life there are as yet no
> differentiations." Well then when do differentiations occur if not in
> some later Now?  Nothing ever happens that doesn't happen in the
> immediate flux of life.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
And DMB, see how you've sidetracked Steve here?  Now he's off onto worrying
about time, when time is just another SPOV like everything else.  Do you see
what a bad question that is "when do differentiations occur"?
> 
> DMB:
> ...The case of Jill Bolte Taylor makes a similar point from the
> opposite direction. She was a brain scientist who has a stroke and
> lost the use of her rational, verbal hemisphere and could only
> experience reality as a whole, so much so
> >  that she could not tell where she ended and the universe began. She
> now says that what she experienced was Nirvana and she cries tears of
> joy when she tells the story. We can think about this pure experience
> or undifferentiated experience in terms of the lack of distinction
> between subject and object but it is a lack of all distinctions. To
> fully realize this lack of division is to be enlightened. That's the
> fundamental reality that Pirsig is talking about. That's what the
> primary empirical reality is. Traditional empiricist and especially
> positivists would never touch this, not even with a ten-foot pole.
> 
> Steve:
> I don't know what to make of these "tears of joy." You've sketched
> enlightenment as a form of brain damage here. You talk of fully
> realizing the lack of all distinctions as though that's how things
> REALLY are and all dictinctions are illusion--that this primary
> reality is what is really real. You know James studies this kind of
> stuff in detail (if you've read Varieties) and never jumped to these
> sorts of metaphysical conclusions.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Well, Steve, this 'tears of joy' stuff is exactly what Pirsig is talking
about.  Nevermind James, he's no authority.  Pirsig came to his realizations
after experiencing enough mental anguish and torment to get himself
involuntarily institutionalized.  You must remember that.  We are not
talking about an academic-theoretical philosophy here.  The difference
between what James is capable of talking about and Pirsig is miles apart.

> 
> 
> 
> > Steve said:
> > ... Trying to compare language to something else that is outside of
> language is in this analogy an attempt to step out of your own skin.
> Why would anyone who has already dropped the correspondence notion even
> think of trying to do that?
> >
> >
> > dmb says:
> > The primary empirical reality is undifferentiated awareness, it's the
> reality you experience before you have a chance to think about it.
> 
> 
> Steve:
> You've just excluded thinking from emprical reality.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Exactly.

> DMB:
> ...Anyway, I don't know who is trying to compare language to what's
> outside language but the mystics and Pirsig will tell you that it
> can't be done.
> 
> Steve:
> 
> Pirsig says it can't be done because language is not adequate to
> representing reality. That is an SOM notion that ought to be
> discarded. Language doesn't fail to represent reality when language
> doesn't represent at all--when all we have are static patterns of
> value and dynamic change.
> 
> We have interpretations (static patterns) and the ability to create
> new and better descriptions (DQ). We can say what we ought to say
> about language using such notions of static and dynamic quality
> without positing some mystical realm or state that language keeps us
> from accessing.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
No we can't.

Best,
Mary

> Best,
> Steve