[MD] Language

[MarshaV]

Good post Mary!  Very good post!!!  


On Jun 5, 2010, at 1:30 PM, Mary wrote:

> 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
> 
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