[MD] Static latching & faith

[David M]

Hi Ant

More good on the ball stuff. By the way Simon Critchley's
book about the differences between continental and
anglo-us philosophy in the very short introduction series...
clearly demonstrates to me that the MOQ is a form
of phenomenological description that tries to sort out
the basics of existence that go beyond the limits of
the catogories used by science for its own specific
purposes. SOM was always about control was it not?
Enlightenment also meant overcoming our repression
externally and anxiety/suffering internally.

But what way forward? I can't help thinking that we will
only see that we don't need the present system after
it has collapsed by its own failures to adapt/change.

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ant McWatt" <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 7:45 PM
Subject: [MD] Static latching & faith


> Ham,
>
> Here are some answers:
>
> You asked in reference to Pirsig's hot stove illustration April 19th:
>
> "What are "oaths"?  Are they the curses that accompany "ouch!" when we sit
> on
> a hot stove?"
>
> Yes, I'd definitely agree with your assumption here.
>
>>The value is more immediate, more directly sensed
>>than any 'self' or any 'object' to which it might be later
>>assigned.  It is the primary empirical reality from which
>>such things as stoves and heat and oaths and self are
>>later intellectually constructed."  (Pirsig, LILA, 1991, p.69)
>
> You commented April 19th:
>
> "I see that you and the author want to make a strong case for
> pre-intellectual value, but it strains credibility."
>
> Pirsig argues that "pre-intellectual reality" should be regarded as
> primarily an evaluative one because for human survival, 'sense data'
> requires constant evaluation; there being an overwhelming avalanche of
> facts, sights and sounds that we are exposed to every second.  If all this
> raw data wasn't processed:
>
> "Our consciousness would be so jammed with meaningless data we couldn't
> think or act.  So we pre-select on the basis of Quality, or, to put it
> [another] way, the track of Quality pre-selects what data we're going to 
> be
> conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best 
> harmonize
> what we are, with what we are becoming."  (Pirsig, ZMM, 1974, p.311)
>
> In reference to a new-born baby's experience, Pirsig (LILA, 1991, p.137)
> argues that this data is then constructed into 'subjects' and 'objects' 
> only
> after more primitive notions such as 'good' & 'bad', warmth' & 'cold',
> 'before' and 'after' are constructed:
>
> One can imagine how an infant in the womb acquires awareness of simple
> distinctions such as pressure and sound, and then at birth acquires more
> complex ones of light and warmth and hunger. he will soon begin to notice
> differences and then correlations between the differences and then
> repetitive patterns of the correlations.  But it is not until the baby is
> several months old that he will understand enough about that enormously
> complex correlation of sensations and boundaries and desires called an
> object to be able to reach for one.  This object will not be a primary
> experience. It will be a complex pattern of static values derived from
> primary experience.
>
> I think this Putnam-reminiscent assertion is reasonable to hold as an 
> infant
> apparently doesn't think its parents or other external objects are 
> distinct
> entities from itself when it is born.  This distinction between oneself 
> and
> the world must be eventually learnt as a valuable one to hold.  A similar
> example indicating the primary status of valuations in comparison to
> subjects and objects is given by Pirsig in reference to single celled
> organisms which apparently don't ever develop a notion of a self opposing 
> an
> objective reality but do almost certainly hold a distinction between good
> and bad:
>
> "An amoeba, placed on a plate of water with a drip of dilute sulfuric acid
> placed nearby, will pull away from the acid (I think).  If it could speak
> the amoeba, without knowing anything about sulfuric acid, could say, 'This
> environment has poor quality.'  If it had a nervous system it would act in 
> a
> much more complex way to overcome the poor quality of the environment.  It
> would seek analogues, that is, images and symbols from its previous
> experience, to define the unpleasant nature of its new environment and 
> thus
> 'understand' it."  (Pirsig, ZMM, 1974, p.251)
>
> It seems, therefore, that notions of subjects and objects only arose much
> later on in evolutionary history than the more primitive notions of good 
> and
> bad - probably when organisms (such as human beings) developed sentience 
> and
> then thought the subject-object distinction would be one of value to hold.
>
> Moreover, the notion of a 'pre-intellectual experience' appears to be
> supported in the recent experiments by the neurologist Benjamin Libet 
> which
> strongly indicates that there is always a constant half second of
> unconscious processing to stimuli before consciousness arises.  The
> intellectual patterns generated after the 'stimuli' of experience creates
> the subjective 'experiencer' and the object 'experienced' which - always
> being in the past - are, again strictly speaking, unreal.
>
> "At the cutting edge of time, before an object can be distinguished, there
> must be a kind of non-intellectual awareness.  You can't be aware that
> you've seen a tree until after you've seen the tree, and between the 
> instant
> of vision and instant of awareness there must be a time lag.  The tree 
> that
> you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always
> in the past and therefore is always unreal.  Any intellectually conceived
> object is always in the past and therefore unreal.  Reality is always the
> moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place."  (Pirsig, 
> ZMM,
> 1974, p.247)
>
> According to the psychologist, Susan Blackmore ('Half a second to stop 
> being
> wicked' in "The Times Higher Education Supplement", No.1660, October 1st
> 2004, p.26) Libet's research concerning the existence of this half-second
> delay, are 'unequivocal' and 'are generally accepted by other scientists'.
>
> You continued April 19th:
>
> "If I spot a cardinal on the branch of a tree, I experience it as a 
> brightly
> colored red bird with a black capped head."
>
> No, you first see a small red coloured patch with some black above it and 
> a
> brown patch below it surrounded by green blobs.  You then hypothesis that
> what you are sensing correlates to a cardinal in a tree branch, both of
> which are three dimensional biological patterns in public space.  This
> recognition of the cardinal might happen quickly (i.e. Benjamin's Libet's
> half second delay) if you are near the "bird" or have a pair of 
> binoculars.
> It may take more time if you are further away, your eyesight isn't
> particularly good or you need to refer to a bird-spotting guide.  You may
> even first mistake "the small red coloured patch with some black above it"
> for another type of bird or creature.  Finally, keep in mind that if you
> then wake up from a dream about seeing a cardinal in a tree then you will
> then realise that the high quality hypothesis that there were 
> corresponding
> three dimensional public biological patterns to the coloured patches was
> false.
>
> You continued April 19th:
>
> "Whatever value I may give to this experience does not change the fact 
> that
> the bird is an object of my experience."
>
> As noted above, the bird is only indirectly an object of your experience.
> The cardinal can never be an empirically immediate pure fact, but only a
> speculative theoretical inference (if a high quality one) constructed from
> the aesthetic continuum.
>
> You continued April 19th:
>
> "And that I recognize this object by its physical attributes.  To claim 
> that
> my
> recognition of a cardinal is secondary to my evaluation of the experience
> simply doesn't make sense to me."
>
> Your recognition of a cardinal is a learnt response from what you have
> learnt to value in the past.  An adult person with no interest (i.e. no
> value disposition) in bird watching would just see a bird while a very 
> young
> infant would just be aware of "a small red coloured patch with some black
> above it and a brown patch below it surrounded by green blobs".  Moreover,
> Hilary Putnam ("Reason, Truth & History", 1981, pp.201-02) details 
> numerous
> categories such as space, animate, inanimate and purpose that need to be
> valued just to utter 'the most banal statement imaginable' i.e. 'The cat 
> sat
> on the mat':
>
> "We have the category 'cat' because we regard the division of the world 
> into
> animals and non-animals as significant, and we are further interested in
> what species a given animal belongs to.  It is relevant that there is a 
> cat
> on that mat and not just a thing.  We have the category 'mat' because we
> regard the division of inanimate things into artifacts and non-artifacts 
> as
> significant, and we are further interested in the purpose and nature a
> particular artefact has.  It is relevant that it is a mat that the cat is 
> on
> and not just a something.  We have the category 'on' because we are
> interested in spatial relations.  To a mind with no disposition to regard
> these as relevant categories, 'the cat is on the mat' would be as 
> irrational
> a remark as 'the number of hexagonal objects is 76' would be, uttered in 
> the
> middle of a tete-à-tete between young lovers."
>
>
> You then questioned my statement about the Tao Te Ching and Western
> imperialism:
>
> "I couldn't let this statement pass without a response":
>
>>I don't know what kind of world we would have had
>>if the Europeans and their American offshoot had just
>>taken advice of the Tao Te Ching and just stayed at
>>home (gardening?)
>
> And then commented:
>
> "While staying at home and tending to the gardening might allow you to
> temporarily evade the wilful destruction of populated market areas and
> office buildings, would you really have us believe that it's an effective
> response to the terroristic threat?  Or do you think that the goal of 
> making
> the world a "more beautiful, unpolluted and peaceful place" takes 
> precedence
> to the defense of a nation in distress?"
>
> I was thinking more about the West's imperial history and the cultural and
> natural heritage we have destroyed in Australasia, the Americas, the 
> Middle
> East and Africa over the last few centuries.  However, regarding the
> present, it would help matters if the West's armed forces left the Middle
> East as soon as practically possible and, while we still have oil to use
> (i.e. time), other alternatives to it are developed in the next few 
> decades.
>  There's great engineering talent in North America and Europe and
> developing high quality oil alternatives would be an exciting if immense
> challenge and also something positive to trade with other cultures (rather
> than war, arms, etc).  I think that's the quality way to go with achieving 
> a
> more peaceful, high quality global environment.  The old solution of
> invading a country for its natural resources is just lazy, short-sighted 
> and
> continues the cycle of violence.  Moreover, "staying at home" doesn't mean
> that each Western nation removes it home defences (or dismantles its
> security services) to freely allow in the (largely fictional) "mad Islamic
> hordes", either.  Finally, with your comment about the "terroristic 
> threat"
> in mind, do remember that one man's terrorist is often another man's 
> freedom
> fighter.
>
> Finally, you mentioned:
>
> "One other question I had asked was why Mr. Pirsig didn't put down
> supernaturalism (or, if you prefer, spiritualism) in a logical or
> dialectical way instead of merely excluding his philosophy from it by a
> causal [casual???] remark."
>
> I replied April 19th:
>
>>I presume because the "author" had more important
>>things to be concerned with though the MOQ is an
>>attempt to remove superstitious nonsense without
>>losing the mystery of the ineffable aesthetic continuum.
>
> You then commented:
>
> "I find it incredulous that an author who devotes his life to philosophy
> would find other things more important than clarifying the ambiguities in
> his theory.  Why has he left this to academics like yourself?   Surely 
> that
> neglect must have troubled you, as well."
>
> Well, philosophologists would largely be out of a job if philosophers
> composed absolutely thorough and complete works!  Anyway, Pirsig has made
> considerable effort to clarify the ambiguities in his work since the 1970s
> starting off with readers' correspondence, Di Santo's and Steele's 1990
> "Guidebook to ZMM", "Lila's Child" (where he made numerous comments about
> early MOQ Discuss posts) and my PhD work.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Anthony
>
>
> www.robertpirsig.org
>
>
> .
>
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