[MD] Static latching & faith

[david buchanan]

Scott, Ant, Ham and all MOQers:

Firstly, I gotta say how much I've enjoyed Ant's posts on this topic. Makes 
me proud to be president of the fan club.

Secondly, he's a brief recap of where I left things last weekend...

dmb asked Scott:
What do you think Pirsig is claiming by say saying that the MOQ is "pure 
empiricism"? And aren't you confusing that with the idea that radical 
empiricism is based on "pure experience" as its explained at the end of 
chapter 29?

Scott said:
I took the phrase "pure empiricism" from a (Pirsig) quote that Ant provided: 
"I think it is extremely important to emphasize that the MOQ is pure 
empiricism. There is nothing supernatural in it."  I take this to mean that 
the MOQ does not include any non-empirical assumptions, that is assumptions
which make no empirical predictions. ..."So in the MOQ experience comes 
first, everything else comes later. This is pure empiricism, as opposed to 
scientific empiricism, which, with its pre-existing subjects and objects, is 
not really so pure." Well, I suppose one can take this to mean that I can 
assume anything I please as long as I do so "later". But obviously, that is 
not what Pirsig meant. Hence, I assume what he means by "pure empiricism" is 
that all assumptions are based on experience, or can be tested byexperience. 
And that, as I have argued, is not the case with the MOQ. It is not enough 
to be consistent with the empirical data. Claiming that God exists is 
consistent with the empirical data (the empirical data does not contradict 
it). But such a claim is not based on empirical data (assuming no mystical 
"presence of God" experience), nor is it empirically testable. The same goes 
for the postulation of an "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" and the 
claim that Quality applies in the inorganic.

dmb replied:
Man, you never fail to miss the point. ...you really need to look at the 
difference between the dictionary's scientific empiricism and the MOQ's 
radical empiricism. Otherwise, this whole issue will remain hopelessly 
confused.

Scott responded:
Here's what you gave as the definition of radical empiricism: (LILA, end of 
chapter 29:) "The second of James' two main systems of philosophy, which he 
said was independent of pragmatism, was his RADICAL EMPIRICISM. By this he 
meant that subjects and objects are not the starting points of experience." 
Nowhere in this post of mine did I say anything that assumes subjects and 
objects are the starting point of experience. The dictionary definitions do 
not refer to S/O experience, they just refer to experience. So what point am 
I missing?

dmb now says:
Well, the dictionary doesn't explicitly mention pre-existing subjects and 
objects and you didn't explicitily mention them either, but I think its 
pretty clear that they are assumed in both cases. I'm saying that the 
dictionary is SOM and you're using that definition to try to understand the 
MOQ's claims. But actually the MOQ's radical empiricism is an attack on that 
definition. It is an attack on sensory experience as its understood by 
positivistic science and common sense. Radical empiricism does NOT "mean 
that the MOQ does not include any non-empirical assumptions". I think you're 
trying to understand Pirsig claims in terms of what he is attacking and as a 
result you're getting the idea that "radical empiricism" is like some kind 
of "perfect positivisim". I see these SOMic assumptions buried in just about 
everything you've said on this topic, but this one is my favorite...

Scott said to Ham:
...Here's the point I am trying to make: in the modern age (since the 17th 
century) the word 'empirical' has been used to distinguish information 
gathered from the senses from information produced through reason alone (for 
example, mathematics), and from information with no apparent source at all 
(e.g., superstition). Now Pirsig is making a rhetorical move in saying that 
the MOQ is empirical. Here's what Ken Wilber had to say about this 
rhetorical move: [Eye to Eye, p. 43] "Let me repeat that one of the reasons 
that ambiguity can and does occur is that "experience" can be used in the 
broad sense ("direct awareness"), but then also given a common and much 
narrower meaning: *sensory* perceptions. By consciously or unconciously 
juxtaposing those meanings, the modern-day empiricist can ridicule the idea 
of knowledge outside experience (so far, so good), but then *limit* 
experience to the sensory-empiric modes (reductionistic fallacy, category 
error, etc.). And so to completely confound matters, many of the new 
humanistic and transpersonal psychologists, working mostly with 
intelligibilia and transcendentalia, and correctly realizing that their data 
is indeed experiential (in the broad sense), and wishing equal recognition 
as "real sciences", simply *call* their endeavors and their data 
"empirical", only to find that strict empirical scientists simply reject 
their results, sometimes with undisguised mocking." ...I agree with Wilber 
that it is useful to keep to the traditional meaning of empirical to avoid 
confusion. As he says, and I agree, this does not make the MOQ wrong. Just 
that it is a mistake to label it empirical.

dmb says:
Yikes. First of all, you're using Wilber to attack Pirsig but Pirsig makes 
the same distinction. This is a classic move of yours, by the way. You like 
to use quotes from various thinkers to attack the MOQ, but it almost always 
turns out to SUPPORT and explain the MOQ.

Lila's Child page 548
"I think the trouble is with the word, "experience." It is...commonly used 
as a subject-object relationship. This relationship is usually considered 
the basis of philosophic empiricism and experimental
scientific knowledge. In a subject-object metaphysics, this experience is 
between a pre-existing object and subject, but in the MOQ, there is no 
pre-existing subject or object....So in the MOQ experience comes first, 
everything else comes later. This is pure empiricism, as opposed to 
scientific
empiricism, which, with its pre-existing subjects and objects, is not really 
so pure."

dmb resumes:
You see, both Pirsig and Wilber are making a distinction between traditional 
empiricism, the narrow sensory data based kind we find in dictionaries and 
in common sense and then there is a broader sense of the term which refers 
to "direct awareness". See, by insisting that we have to use the traditonal 
definition, you're insisting that we understand Pirsig's claims in terms of 
the very thing his claims are rejecting. By insisting on the narrow sense of 
the word "experience", you are insisting on using the SOM assumptions. I 
believer this is the source of your confusion. I believe this is why you're 
missing the point. See, "pure empiricism" is not perfectly executed 
scientific empiricism, it is a criticism of scientific empiricism and a 
rejection of its metaphysical assumptions. The MOQ begins with experience, 
but not with sensory experience, not with sense data. It begins with "direct 
awareness" instead of sensory experience because sensory experience depends 
on a pre-existing subject with sense organs. As such, scientific empiricism 
begins with a theoretically inferred subject, which in turn has the 
experience, through the senses, of a pre-existing object or objects. See, 
radical empiricism is refered to as pure because experience comes first. 
There are no pre-existing subjects or objects which are said to give rise to 
experience or to be the cause of experience. The MOQ's claim to purity in 
this sense is not a claim about perfection or about the total absence of 
theory. The MOQ's empiricism is "pure" in the sense that it does not assert 
some kind of CAUSE behind experience. It does not assert an unseen 
theoretical reality behind experience. It asserts no Platonic forms, no 
Aristotelean Prime Mover, no Kantian things-in-themselves, and no 
pre-existing subjects and objects. Instead, it begins with experience.

It even seems that you want to see some kind of physics experiments in which 
the existence of a undifferentiated reality is proven through sensory 
observation. But this would simply be one more unseen theoretical cause 
behing experience. That's not what the MOQ claims at all. The "primary 
empirical reality" is not a person, place or thing. Its not a realm or 
entity that we know through observation. Rather it is "direct awareness" 
itself. See, the MOQ's empirical purity refers to the idea that it all 
begins with experience rather than with subjects (what you call the 
Cartesian self) that have experience and/or the things which are 
experienced. The MOQ says that subjects and objects are theories. They are 
normally just assumed rather than explicitly asserted. We imagine that all 
experience entails physical organisms with nervous systems complex enough to 
include the sense organs so that the West's scientific, philosophical and 
common sense notions about experience depends on that assumption. The usual 
meaning of the word "empirical" rests on that same assumption and so that's 
why it is so confusing to read Pirsig's empirical claims without first 
rejecting that assumption.

As Pirsig puts it, RADICAL EMPIRICISM means "that subjects and objects are 
not the starting points of experience. Subjects and objects are secondary. 
They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he described 
as the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later 
reflection. In this basic flux of experience the distinctions of reflective 
thought, consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter have 
not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot be 
called either physical or psychical. It
logically precedes this distinction." Ho hum. I've tried to make it 
impossible to miss the point, but if the future is anything like the past,  
you'll find a way.

Thanks.
dmb

P.S. Here's a question for you Scott; How far away from an object does a 
person have to be in order for that object to appear as its actual size? In 
other words, at what distance from the eye does a yard stick actually look 
like its exactly a yard long? Under what circumstances does objective 
reality appear to the subject as it actually is? (Assuming you are exactly 
six feet tall and weigh 175 pounds and making your observations in a vacuum, 
but in normal earth gravity.) If you can crack this riddle, you will surely 
get the point.

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