[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[John Carl]

Krimel and dave,


> [Krimel]
> As I have said many time I think it was a mistake to use the term "quality"
> instead of "tao." I think it detracts from the whole enterprise.


John:

Well  I disagree with you there Krimel.  Tao probably sounds good to your
fashion-oriented ears cuz they said it was cool on nova or some
 seminary seminar somewhere.

But midwestern plains talk mentality don't really go for all that mumbo
jumbo fancy pants foreigner talk, no sir.  Quality is something every
cowpoke understands, cuts 'o beef or dance house floozies.  We know it when
we see it.

Calling it tao would be counterproductive and it looks funny on paper.
 "Tay-oh," the third grader reads and thinks.

Obviously marketing is not your forte.

But when
> you write one book admitting that Taoism is central to it and a second book
> expanding on the dichotomy outlined by Lao Tsu and by his followers using
> the same sort of terminology they use but claim it is different or unique
> seems odd. In fact I never thought that is what Pirsig was doing until I
> came here.
>
>
 The point of this uniqueness is that it started on an uncharted path, and
ended up on a charted one.  Any value there?  I'd say yes, since modernity
is the place I'm in at the moment, and pretty close to the same place the
author started from.  That means I can get somewhere established and correct
 so that chart is a valuable AND unique chart.


And you can call it Tao, or DQ or Peanut Butter, but I know what Pirsig
meant, AND Lao Tsu, cuz I follow the MoQ trail and find it to be good.




>  dmb said:
> ... but the distinction between discrete and continuous is not exactly a
> "metaphysical" cut.
>
> Krimel replied:
> But it is; in the same way that Platonic idealism is a metaphysical cut or
> the mind/body is a metaphysical cut.
>


John:

I'm with Krimel on that one.  I'd even one-up him with , not only is it A
metaphysical cut, I'd say it's THE metaphysical cut. Experience is first
continuous, then analyzed at our discretion.


> [dmb]
> No, I think Pirsig and James are with Heraclitus all the way. I mean, how
> neatly does James's "stream of consciousness" go with the Heraclitian (Is
> that a dirty word?) idea that we can't stand in the same river twice? Very
> neatly.
>


John:

I'd take semantic issue with H. on this.  You can stand in the same river
twice.  You know why?  Because a river isn't what a bunch of water molecules
ARE, a river is what a bunch of water molecules DO.  It's a process, not a
thing and the name we give to rivers is naming that process, not naming the
things that make up the process.  All rivers are incredibly dynamic,
shifting their bends, flood and ebb, but we don't rename them every time
they restlessly toss in their bed.

>
>
> Krimel said:
> Well, do we disagree? Since I think emotional non-conceptual functioning as
> well as verbal conceptual functioning are sets of biological patterns that
> evolved in response to Quality.
>
> dmb says:
> Verbal conceptual functioning is biological? Yea, we disagree there. I'd
> call that reductionism.
>
>
John:

Yeah, I'm with dave on this one.



>  [Krimel]
> I think that would be a very difficult position to defend. As I just
> pointed
> out, problems in the production and recognition of speech can be located
> within particular brain structures. I know of no one in the field of
> psychology, diverse as it is, who would argue your point for you. For that
> matter no one in medicine or biology or any field that actually requires
> familiarity with this research.
>


John:  Research into biology alone can't explain  verbal conceptualization
since research into biology IS verbal conceptualization.  You have to have
metaphysics to avoid your basic bootstrapping issues there.



> [Krimel]
> Jung and Freud to the extent that they actually made contributions to
> psychology and psychiatry made those contributions at a time before there
> wasn't much understanding of mental disorders. Their ideas were useful
> because they kind of worked at a time when nothing else did. Electro-shock
> and lobotomies also worked and more effectively than talking cures but with
> the exception of electro-shock they are not widely practiced anymore
> either.
> Both Freud and Jung are of more interest to philosophers and literary
> types.
> Within medicine and psychology they are primarily of historical interest.
>

John:

I just came across some interesting discussion of these two, in the light of
their SOM assumptions:

"... Freud did not see that the ego was an inappropriate adaptation.  He saw
that, as a social convention, it was self-contradictory, but he did not see
that it was unnecessary.  He could not conceive of consciousness without the
duality of subject and object.  Yet how often he came so close to the point!
 One thinks, in particular, of his remarkable little essay on "The
Antithetical Sense of Primal Words" where he reviews Karl Able's studies of
the polarity of such words as the ancient Egyptian *ken*, meaning both
strong and weak.  Freud had noticed a similar ambivalence  or polarity in
the symbolism of dreams.  'Dreams', he wrote in the same essay, 'show a
special tendency to reduce two opposites to a unity or to represent them as
one thing;  He goes on to quote Abel, "It is clear that everything on this
planet is relative and has independent existence only in so far as it is
distinguished in its relations to and from other things.... Man has not been
able to acquire even his oldest and simplest conceptions otherwise than in
contrast with their opposite: he only gradually learnt to separate the two
sides of the antithesis and think of the one without conscious comparisons
with the other.'

Jung seems to be in no better position: 'I cannot imagine a conscious mental
state that does not refer to a subject, that is, to an ego.  The ego may be
depotentiated--divested of its awareness of the body--but so long as there
is awareness of something, there must be somebody who is aware.'

 (sounds like Ham)

How a mere convention of syntax, that the verb must have a subject, can
force itself upon perception and seem to be the logic of reality!  Under
these circumstances Jung's understanding of the "ego-less' state of
consciousness as the Eastern text describe it leaves much to be desired.  To
put it rather briefly, he believes that is not ego-less at all.  It is only
that the ego is temporarily forgotten in descending to a more primitive
level of awareness, to the undifferentiated awareness that supposed to have
been characteristic of man's pre-civilized mentality

(sounds like Bo)

... Jung assumes that a strong ego structure, a struggle against nature, is
the necessary condition of civilization, and is thus in danger of reaching
the same despair as Freud.  But it is one thing to note that civilization is
as we know it has depended upon the ego concept; it is quite another to
assert that it must, as if this convention were somehow in the nature of
things.

Freud and Jung are both fully alive to the interdependence of life's great
opposites, but for both they constitute a finally insoluble problem.  Freud
fears that the tension between them must at least become unbearable; Jung
seems prepared to walk the tightrope between them forever."

Alan Watts

(who sounds like the MoQ)


> [dmb]
> But I think it makes a lot more sense to think of language and culture as
> different in kind from the biological platform on which it depends. I think
> it makes a lot of sense to think of biological evolution and social
> evolution as distinctly different, qualitatively different. Because of this
> difference, I think you can't explain or understand the latter in terms of
> the former. This is not to say that you can have culture and language
> independently of bodies with brains. I'm just saying that culture is not
> biological and language is not a property of the brain.
>
>
John:  Good point, dave.  I agree completely.


> [Krimel]
> I don't think you can understand much about language or culture without
> understanding their function as natural processes. Since they arise from
> biological processes those processes are relevant at least as starting
> points. James would not agree with your position either he was the chief
> advocate for looking at the function behavior and language play in
> promoting
> human survival. He explicitly brought Darwinian agreements into the study
> of
> psychology and one of his lasting contributions to the field is within
> evolutionary psychology.
>
>
John:  Umm. good points also, Krimel.  Although I'm not ready to agree
completely.

Language and culture are the tools we use to dissect language and culture.
 That ain't a problem for me.  But language and culture used to dissect
biological processess which are are then extrapolated to explain language
and culture?  That gets you into metaphysical trouble, in my book.

>
> [dmb]
> Are butterflies democratic or are they ruled by monarchs? What god does the
> Mantis pray to?
>
>
John:

Monarch Butterflies!  Nice.



> [Krimel]
> Again not especially social nor would have a large brain to house a complex
> nervous system serve them very well in their biological niches. They don't
> do those things because they don't need them to survive. We do them because
> we do.
>
> [dmb]
> Do bees feel patriotic when they sacrifice themselves for the hive? And do
> ants hold parades for their war heroes?
>
>

John:  This is where John comes to the rescue with his formulation of social
patterns in mammalian development.  Ants and bees need not apply.  An ant
has no sense of self whereas a dog does.

  Thank you both for the kibitzin' opportunity.

John