[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: Steve Peterson <vincentedisonluther at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: Re: [MD] Platt's Individual Level
>Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 13:01:24 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Hi Dan, all,
>
>Dan said to David:
>I think there's some confusion here that I will try and clear up. Gene M
>believes a person exists separately from the idea we might hold of that
>person.
>
>[Steve]
>I think pretty much everbody believes that.

Hi Steve

Pretty much everyone believes that because it's a high quality idea. 
However, the Buddha taught that it is the essence of ignorance to believe in 
an actual self. That's not to say that there's no subjective self in 
Buddhism, only that there is no actual person behind the concept of "I". The 
Buddha taught that if this erroneous view is corrected then there would be 
no ignorance.

>
>To believe otherwise is solipsism.

Only if one fails to understand cause and condition.

>Don't you believe that I exist for example?

I believe that you believe you exist.

>
>[Dan]
>That belief is contrary to what the MOQ states, imo. Looking to LILA
>we read:
>
>"Man is always the 'measure of all things...'"
>
>
>[Steve]
>I don't think this is MOQ support for solipsism.

I don't recall saying it was. My post was a response to David M asking: "If 
your murder someone you still have your idea of them, right?" My point had 
more to do with: "We are always in the position of that squirrel."

>I think if you read on in that passage you'll see that the point is that 
>intellectual patterns are subjective and culturally filtered wheras 
>biological patterns are the same for everyone. He's using it as a lead in 
>to talk about insanity and how diagnosing insanity is qualitatively 
>different than diagnosing a biological disease:

Quite right.

>
>"Pneumonia is a biological pattern.  It is scientifically verifiable.  ...
>Insanity on the other hand is an intellectual pattern. ... No scientific 
>instrument can be produced in court to show who is insane and who is sane.  
>There's nothing about insanity that conforms to any scientific law of the 
>universe.  The scientific laws of the universe are invented by sanity.  
>There's no way by which sanity, using the instruments of its own creation, 
>can measure that which is outside of itself and its creations.  Insanity 
>isn't an "object" of observation.  It's an alteration of observation 
>itself.  There's is no such thing as a "disease" of patterns of intellect.  
>There's only heresy.  And that's what insanity really is.
>... It is a social and intellectual deviation, not a biological deviation."
>[Dan]
>Man measures with intellect, with ideas. Always.
>[Steve}
>I think 'measure' in this quote ammounts to 'experience' in the MOQ which 
>says that experience comes in several varieties of which intellect is only 
>one kind.

Measure in this context amounts to an evaluation or a basis of comparison, 
intellectual level activities.

>[Dan]
>We presume there's a person behind our idea of the person. And that is a 
>high quality presumption, I should think. At the same time however, since 
>we are unable to experience reality directly, we cannot know with certainty 
>that there really is a person there behind our idea of the person. All we 
>have are our assumptions. Always.
>
>[Steve]
>The existence of a person is scientifically verifiable at any time. We 
>don't have to make a distinction between a person and our idea of the 
>person.

How is the existence of a person scientifically verifiable? Where is that 
person at?

>
>I disagree with "we are unable to experience reality directly." In the MOQ 
>reality is an abstraction from experience or is considered equivalent to 
>experience.

All experience is a remembrance, an after-the-fact intellectualization. 
There may be a "dim apprehension of we know not what" but until we put sense 
to it, that's all it is.

>
>
>Dan quotes RMP:
>But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely
>expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth 
>time and Ph�drus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that 
>the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. 
>The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.
>
>Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been
>correct, but for Ph�drus and for anyone else who reads newspapers 
>regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human 
>beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left 
>India and gave up.
>---------------------------
>[Dan comments]
>I think what Phaedrus possibly failed to grasp during his time in India is
>that though the nature of the world is illusory, that nature doesn't negate
>cause and condition. I think Phaedrus gave up on account of the fact he
>failed at the time to grasp that there is no separation between subject and 
>object...he believed objects were things in themselves rather than
>intellectual patterns of value, a very difficult point to grasp. So perhaps
>it was just easier to give up and go home than it was to expand his
>consciousness to the point of that of his Indian professor.
>
>[Steve]
>The above quote contradicts your view that ideas are the only things that 
>exist.

How so?

>
>In the MOQ objects are not intellectual patterns as you say, they are 
>inorganic and biological patterns.

The MOQ is a collection of intellectual patterns of value.

>
>I think Pirsig makes sense of "the world is illusory" when he explains how 
>our intellectual patterns are culturally derived (accept for Platt's of 
>course).

But why did he give up and leave India?

>
>As for Nagasaki, the atom bomb, and us, we are all part of the same 
>'illusion' from an inorganic or biological perspective, regardless of what 
>social patterns and ideas we have surrounding an explosion.
>

I'm unsure what this means. Please explain.

Thank you for your comments,

Dan


"There is nothing which exists inherently. In that fashion, even 
non-functional things do not exist. Therefore, functional things which arise 
from causes and conditions as well as non-functional things are empty of 
inherent existence." (Nagarjuna)