[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Ant McWatt]

Matt,

Here are a few more answers and a lot more questions…

I mentioned Northrop’s concepts by intuition and postulation as they put 
more detail in Chalmer’s criticism of Dennett’s conflation of ‘seem’ in the 
psychological sense and ‘seem’ in the phenomenal sense.  You appear to brush 
this criticism off by stating that “Dennett and some others do sometimes, in 
their less careful and more scientistic moments, sound like they are using 
the distinction and saying the latter psychological ‘seem’” but, as far as I 
remember, Chalmer’s thought this conflation largely undermined Dennett’s 
theory on consciousness especially as it appears in a critical part of 
“Consciousness Explained” i.e. Chapter 12 where Dennett is trying to 
“disqualify” qualia (or what you portray as an explanation of “_why_ we 
believe in qualia”).  I’d also say that it is wrong-headed to think that you 
can “believe in qualia.”  It’s an inane project as “_why_ we believe that we 
breathe” and is no doubt an ‘epiphenomenon’ of an SOM frame of mind.

Even before you get past the first page of “Consciousness Explained”, 
Dennett asserts that there is a mystery to be explained about why Cartesian 
mind substance can “fit in the same world with the nerve cells and molecules 
that [make] up my brain”.  And, of course, the answer is……

(drum roll)

…there isn't a mystery unless you’re buying into SOM (or at least some of 
its assumptions).

F.S.C. Northrop (“The Meeting of East & West”, 1946, p.452-53) explains the 
difficulties with the “mystery” below:

“The concatenation of factors which is an awareness of a rose as red is not 
a result of an unaesthetic material substance by some mysterious activity 
jumping out of space across a metaphysical gulf to act upon an equally 
unaesthetic blank mental substance which in some mysterious way projects out 
of itself the color which is observed, as a mere appearance; instead all 
occurrences in human awareness and in human knowledge are a result of 
natural relations between entities which in their aesthetic character and in 
their theoretic character are in the same world of discourse.”

“The color of the rose is, to be sure, a function of the observer, but it is 
equally surely a function also of the character of the rose…. it is a 
function, not of any hypothetical mental substance with which the observer 
is supposed to be identified, but… of the observer’s bodily sense organs…. 
for it is not by altering the mental substance but by altering the effect 
upon the rods and cones in a normal person’s eye that he can be made to see 
a different color upon the rose than the one he normally sees.”

The “Cartesian mystery” can only be avoided by Descartes' assumptions 
concerning mind and matter being dropped completely (which Dennett isn’t 
doing!) and by employing a completely different ontology such as that found 
in Taoism or Mahayana Buddhism.  I think you not only avoid the unlikely 
conclusions of behaviourism etc with such systems, you get better accounts 
of how qualia and consciousness relates with other aspects of reality.  The 
real mystery – in this regard - is the length of time it took Western 
philosophers to catch-up with their East Asian counterparts.

Unfortunately, if one does not become familiar with East Asian philosophy 
before approaching the usual analytic suspects (such as Dennett, Putnam, 
Sellars & Quine) found in the contemporary Anglo-American philosophy 
department then you’re usually heading for a metaphysical mess (and a 
headache).  The “analytic game” is already loaded within a particular 
physicalist/behaviourist frame of reference so solutions based on East Asian 
philosophy don’t get a look in unless you bring them in yourself.  From what 
I’ve read so far, John Searle is probably the best of this “bunch” but even 
he is miles away from where Northrop and Pirsig are coming from.

Anyone with some interest in the philosophical background of Pirsig’s work 
will know that Northrop’s ontology is also based on the East Asian tradition 
rather than, for instance, a Kantian one (though Northrop’s concepts by 
intuition and by postulation, of course, aren’t a feature of the MOQ).  As 
such, I do suspect that Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction 
and Sellars' attack on the Myth of the Given (that you mentioned), are both 
attacking some forms of Cartesian SOM and, as such, are irrelevant to 
Northrop’s conceptual framework.   (However, if you do think their 
respective critiques dismiss the Tao/Dynamic Quality altogether, it would be 
interesting to hear why).

An explanation of why you replied “I can accept it looking like hubris” to 
David E. Cooper’s point that there is the issue of hubris that philosophers 
such as Rorty and Dennett are engaged in denying (or at least, denying the 
importance of) the non-linguistic source of all (static) things would also 
be of interest.  Are you saying that a correct recognition of the Tao in a 
philosophical system is not a desirable thing?  Or are you declaring that 
Dennett’s and Rorty’s work only appears to be implying this?  I’m also not 
sure the “worshipping of mystery” should be just discounted without 
explanation.  I’m not saying that I necessarily disagree with your sentiment 
but I do wonder where your dismissal is coming from.

I do think philosophers should at least be concerned with mystery though not 
the “Cartesian mystery” which Dennett thinks (on page one of “Consciousness 
Explained”) is the last genuine one remaining!   Rather, I think the central 
mystery remains the aesthetic component found in the world and human nature. 
  As Northrop (from “The Logic of the Sciences & Humanities”) discusses in 
the following:

“[For instance], the primary task of poetry, arising out of art in its first 
function, is to convey the aesthetic component of reality in and for itself 
apart from all postulated doctrine and theory. Put more concretely, it must 
keep men continuously aware of the freshness and the ineffable beauty and 
richness of the immediately apprehended.  This is a function which must be 
provided. Otherwise we lose the riches and values of life which are 
immediately before our senses.”

“One of the most deadening influences upon human living arises out of the 
need to move on beyond the aesthetically immediate to postulated 
common-sense objects for the purposes of practical life and to postulated 
scientific objects and philosophical systems for the satisfaction of our 
intellectual curiosity and the attainment of more complete and manageable 
human knowledge. Both of these movements are necessary and good.  
Nevertheless, by themselves they tend to cause us to treat the ineffable 
beauty and the soul-sustaining freshness of the aesthetically immediate 
merely as a means to an end, thereby overlooking the contemplation of it in 
and for itself. As we hurry down the street of an evening the worries of 
practical living so overwhelm us, or, - if we are more scientifically and 
philosophically minded - we become so engrossed in our theories of the 
internal molecular constitution of the stars that we do not see and become 
refreshed by the beauty of the sunset which is immediately before our eyes. 
Unless we are protected by poetry and the other arts functioning purely in 
and for themselves, reality in its theoretical aspect is sought at the cost 
of losing its equally real aesthetic component, and the mind of man becomes 
overstimulated while his spirit dies.”

“There is a factor of the nature of things which can be known only by 
science and by theory with its recourse to concepts by postulation, and 
there is another important part pressing on the very threshold of our senses 
denoted by concepts by intuition which is equally essential for calm and 
complete living. The tragedy of the neglect of poetry and its sister arts 
treated in and for themselves is that we lose those riches of life which are 
available to everybody, rich and poor alike, immediately before our ears and 
noses and eyes. It is as if a man has part of the riches for which he is 
searching, present in his own yard and being so concerned about what is on 
the other side of its fence, goes off seeking in a far country.”

“The character of anything immediately apprehended merits more meticulous
examination. Any item which is immediately felt or sensed is ineffable. One 
can look at a blue for hours and not quite intuit all its depth and 
richness. Also, if one's friend has never sensed a blue, no amount of 
discourse by the poet or the scientist can convey that datum to him. This is 
the character of anything immediately apprehended that it has to be 
immediately experienced to be known. If to be unstatable and hence ineffable 
is the characteristic of the mystical, then, contrary to popular opinion, 
the mystical and the ineffable is not off in some far distant speculative 
heaven, but in immediately apprehended fact directly before our eyes.”  
(Northrop, 1947, pp.175-77)

Northrop also discusses the aesthetic component of reality in some depth in 
“The Meeting of East & West” and emphasises here that it is important that 
we take proper account of it in learning to deal with the different 
(intellectual and social) values held by the various cultures in the world.  
Northrop argues that since the creation of nuclear weapons this _isn’t_ a 
luxury that can be conveniently divided from other philosophical concerns.

“First, the aesthetic component is an irreducible and essential component in 
man’s nature.  Second, this aesthetic component is in part indeterminate…  
As cultivated by the Orient, the indeterminate aesthetic continuous 
component in man’s nature and in the nature of all things has demonstrated 
itself to be a factor which pacifies men, giving them a compassionate 
fellow-feeling not merely for other men but for all nature’s creatures, and 
serving to keep them more at peace with each other, rather than to send them 
off on wild, ill-considered and ill-grounded aggressive private, 
nationalistic, or religious military escapades.”  (Northrop, 1946, p.471-72)

As such, it sounds like a good idea that everyone should become Zen 
Buddhists or Taoists with strong interests in fine art, nature conservation 
and politics as soon as possible.  What do you reckon?

Best wishes,

Anthony.


www.robertpirsig.org


“[Santa Claus] and I think alike – and of course we are both, by our own 
accounts, fictional characters of a sort, though of a slightly different 
sort.”  (Dennett, 1991, p.411)


.

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