[MD] Static latching & faith

[Scott Roberts]

DMB,

dmb says:
I think both of you guys are being far too generous, although I'd certainly
agree that its a bad idea to read Scott's posts if you're looking for
clarity. Yikes! I wish I had the time and energy to untangle some
substantial portion of the confusion he's wrought here, but that could take
weeks. Instead, I'll just pick a few examples...

Scott:
Most of the confusion comes from your saying I said things I didn't say. You 
and Ham.

Scott said to Ant:
But of course more germane is the question: just because I have a concept by
intuition, doesn't make it empirical (or true).

Ant replied:
On the contrary, Scott.  Concepts by intuition are the only things which are
purely empirical and we know to be true (irrespective of whether we are
dreaming of the colours and sound that correlate, for instance, to Ham's
cardinal bird on a tree branch or seeing them "for real"). [As Northrop puts
it,] "All that the senses convey are colors and sounds and odors, pains and
pleasures. These are not external material objects.  They are ineffable,
aesthetic qualities, the kind of thing which the impressionistic artist
rather than the physicist gives one. Thus again we come to the same
conclusion. Pure fact is a continuum of ineffable aesthetic qualities, not
an external material object."

"Consequently, if one prefers to be thoroughly hard-boiled with respect to
one's beliefs, rejecting all inference and theory as belonging to
soft-minded speculative philosophers sitting in arm chairs, and if one forth
with proposes to restrict oneself to facts only, then it is not with the
belief in external material objects or the other persons of common sense, or
with the electrons, protons, electromagnetic waves and other unobservable
scientific objects of the physicist that one can have anything to do. For
all these common-sense and scientific objects are theoretically inferred
objects; they are not purely empirically given, immediately apprehended
facts. Instead, it is to impressionistic art with nothing but its sense
impressions that one must restrict oneself."  (Northrop, "Logic of the
Sciences & Humanities", 1947, p.41)

To which Scott replied:
I see nothing but a spinning of arguments to convince oneself that something
that one is already convinced of can have the word 'empirical' attached to
it. I see nothing here that rules out the old mechanistic Newtonian
worldview

dmb says:
Nothing but spin? Its almost had to believe that you're sincere, Scott. I
mean, its hard to see how you could miss the point or otherwise fail to
understand what "empirical" means here. Looking at the two quotes we see the
use of terms and phrases such as "colors, sounds, odors, pleasurs, pains,
aesthetic qualities, purely empirically given, immediately apprehended fact
and sense immpressions." How could anyone fail to see how all of these refer
to experience, to raw empirical data?

Scott:
I am not failing to see that. Where have I said they are not empirical? The 
question at hand is whether the metaphysical system called the MOQ is "pure 
empiricism".

DMB said:
 And the terms and phrases refering to
raw empirical experience are contrasted with CONCEPTS about "theoretically
inferred objects" and "external material objects". Within a SOM framework,
the objects of material reality are supposed to be the cause of that raw
empirical data, but Northrop and Pirsig are saying that this is backwards.

Scott:
Fine. They are saying that it is backwards. Does that make it an empirical 
truth that it is backwards? No. It is a metaphysical claim. We call such 
claims metaphysical to distinguish them from empirical claims.

DMB said:
The are overturning these materialist assumptions in favor of a more
"radical empiricism", one that does not assume that experience depends upon
pre-existing subjects in an objective physical reality. See, I think Scott
is operating on the very assumptions that the MOQ is designed to replace.
This is why I think SA and Ant are being too generous in characterizing this
as an "alternative" view or whatever. I think its just a lack a
comprehension. I think its just scatter-brained confusion.

Scott:
No I am not operating under those assumptions. I am only pointing out that 
rejecting those assumptions is not based on empirical data, since the 
empirical data is consistent with both accepting those assumptions and 
rejecting them. Nor does it have anything to do with depending on belief in 
a pre-existing subject. Dennett, for example, doesn't believe in 
pre-existing subjects, but also would have no truck with assuming the 
reality of value in the inorganic. I am not, in this thread, trying to 
present an alternative view. I am only trying to point out that *all* 
metaphysical views go beyond the empirical to put together a theory.

Ant said to Scott.
I think quantum physics is only "odd" for SOM ingrained people.  What is
actually "odd" is the clinging to old "metaphysical maps" when the physics
shows that they are now out-of-date (at least, in certain contexts, usually
the very small or the very large).

Scott said:
Now there are arguments (I've advanced some) for rejecting [the Newtonian]
worldview, but those arguments by themselves do not imply that "there is" an
undifferentiated continuum beyond the human subject -- much less that it
deserves the characterization "aesthetic".

dmb says:
Beyond the human subject? I think Scott is rejecting a Newtonian world view
without rejecting the SOM framework in which it exists and has missed the
whole point as a result. I think this is why he continues to confuse
intellectual descriptions with raw empirical data. Also, this is why Scott
seems to be taking the phrase "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum"
literally, as if it refered to some kind of entity or territory or realm
which can be located and measured like a material object. Boy, is that ever
missing the point. Double Yikes!

Scott:
Where I have confused intellectual descriptions with raw empirical data? And 
no, I am not assuming that "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" is 
referring to some measurable object. I am questioning on what supposedly 
*empirical* basis Northrop has come up with the concept "undifferentiated 
aesthetic continuum". Apparently you think that the undifferentiated 
aesthetic continuum is a given. For mystics it might be, but not for 
everyone. If it were a given, why did Northrop have to come up with a theory 
about it? Why does he have to tell us about it? I'm not saying his theory is 
wrong, just pointing out that it is a theory, not something we all know 
prior to theorizing, like we know what it is like to be in pain.

- Scott