[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

Reading your response, and cutting through the various communication blocks 
and differences in vocabulary and places where we just aren't sure how to 
understand each other, I think we more or less agree with each other on many 
of the issues we've been talking about recently, with physicalism, 
essentialism, and such, though perhaps not with specific ways of putting the 
point (on that count, we still differ significantly in certain places).  The 
problem is, I'm not quite sure I can connect everything together to try and 
convince you that we are a lot closer than you think (and I once thought).  
It would require a lot of pedantic, detailed straightening out to get us on 
to a page that we could agree on, a page that my bet is we'd find that we 
agree to a certain extent.  So, all I'm going to do is pluck a few of the 
things you say and try to briefly spell out the terms on which I think we 
agree.

DMB said:
I mean, if you're already inclined to say "that we HAVE primary 
experiences", then what's the problem with saying "that we KNOW primary 
experiences"? ... I'm only saying that this sort of knowing can be 
distinquished from other sorts.

Matt:
My distinction between "having" and "knowing" is my way of distinguishing, 
in the way you want to put it, "this sort of knowing ... distinguished from 
other sorts."  I do that for other philosophical reasons (having to do with 
avoiding the idea that the world makes sentences true) that would take up 
too much space to fill in here.  But if you're asking me to be flexible 
enough to say that they are two different, distinguishable kinds of knowing, 
then I'd ask you to be flexible enough to allow me my way of distinguishing 
those two kinds of knowing.  They aren't done for exclusionary reasons 
(e.g., as if I wanted to say at some point, "but primary experience isn't 
_knowledge_, therefore it is _lesser_..."), they are done for other SOM 
avoidance reasons.

DMB said:
I mean, the idea that language is a tool to use in the world is obviously 
analogous to Darwinian biological adaptations to the enviroment. ... See, 
the MOQ would not say that language is a tool we use to cope with the world, 
instead it says something more like language IS the (static) world.

Matt:
I commented on this in an earlier post I sent seperately, but I should add 
that I agree that the language-as-tool is analogous to Darwinian evolution.  
But that is something Pirsig would be fine with.  Static patterns are 
evolutionary.  So, say from within a static pattern view of the world, 
Darwinian evolution holds where biological patterns evolved out of inorganic 
and language evolved out of biological patterns.  Within the static view, 
I'm suggesting we view the creation of language like the creation of an arm 
(to replace the view of language-as-mirror)--an evolutionary tool that helps 
us.  I see no conflict here.  From a different view, however, language is 
the static world because the only way we can talk about the static world is 
to talk about it.  I think being able to flip-flop between these two views 
is what allows us to refrain from being idealists in the sense of making 
_language_ the substance of reality.  I don't think Pirsig wants to say that 
language (plus DQ) is all there is and I don't think you're saying that.

DMB said:
As I understand it, every person on the planet is an essentialist or an 
anti-essentialist. I think this is the form of essentialism, as I already 
tried to point out, that simply believes that rocks are made of rock, that 
the essence of water is H2O, that the world was here before I arrived and 
will persist after I'm gone. You know, common sense.  I think that in the 
Eastern religions, this natural essentialism is thought of as a kind of 
illusion, or at least that it is illusory in the sense that the world isn't 
as solid as it seems, not even the rocks. Its sort of their version of 
original sin, the fate we are all damned to endure and the problem to be 
overcome. Enlightenment entails seeing through this illusion.

Matt:
I agree that common sense is basically essentialism.  However, I think you 
need to avoid the idea that we need to "see through this illusion."  Nothing 
could sound more like the appearance/reality distinction.  All I think we 
need is to cut a distinction between vulgar common sense and sophisticated 
philosophies.  We can affirm common sense for common sense purposes and, 
when people get all "philosophical" about "is this really all there is?", we 
suggest that that's a bad question.  The Eastern religious attitude you've 
brought up suggests that we should replace the illusion with reality.  
That's just as essentialistic as vulgar common sense.  It wants to replace 
one version of essentialism with another.  If we are to remain 
antiessentialists, we have to refrain from illusion-talk.  We should simply 
say that common sense talk about rocks being here before us is fine for 
common sense and physics, but for other things it is not.  There is no 
essence to water other than the essence we've put there because we (our 
values) are inherently bound up with reality (rocks, water, gov'ts, ideas).  
That's misleading, too, but it at least drops talk about the _really real_.

DMB said:
As to your "non-reductive physicalism", I'm skeptical. I mean, by saying 
things can be explained in "microstructural terms" you seem to be saying 
they can be reduced to atoms and molecules. I guess I just don't have a 
knife sharp enough to split that hair. If the larger point is simply that 
science works and we shouldn't junk it, I'd agree of course. But I think the 
MOQ asserts that science and the "things" it investigates are both 
imaginative creations and both are part of the mythos, but would avoid 
making any claims about the "substance" or microstructural cause of that 
experience.

Matt:
Things can be reduced to atoms and molecules the same way subjects and 
objects can be reduced to Quality.  Pirsig's not saying, "Oh my God!  It was 
really Quality creating subjects and objects all along!  That's _really_ how 
it is!"  He's just saying, "Hey, we should think of it this way and a lot of 
our problems clear up."  All of these things are part of our mythos and our 
job is to improve our mythos.  The suggestions about "reduction" are just 
suggestions about getting a particular job done.  When doing science, you 
use microstructural terms.  Non-reductive physicalism makes no claims about 
substance, because substances go out the window with essentialism.  As for 
the microstructural cause of experience, I'm not sure what you're suggesting 
Pirsig is asserting we deny.  Science does its thing.  We philosophers do 
ours.  I'm not sure what the problem is when going from a "light bounces on 
my retina stimulating my C-fiber" description to "I see red" description.  
Both have their uses.  I see no reason to block the road of scientific 
inquiry.  Let them investigate what they want.  If it works, it works.  What 
we aren't doing is taking them to be investigating reality as it really is.

DMB said:
But what I really wanted to address here, was the idea that 
anti-essentialism leads to the equality of all vocabularies.

Matt:
The important clause when saying "all vocabularies are equal" is "all 
vocabularies are epistemologically equal."  When we do traditional 
epistemology, the thought is that we could find vocabularies (for instance 
physics for scientific materialists or theology for theists or poetry for 
the Romantics) that get us closer to reality as it really is.  By saying 
that all vocabularies are epistemologically equal we've shut down the search 
for a language (Nature's language or God's) that gets us closer to reality.  
What we haven't lost, however, is the ability to rate particular 
vocabularies on how helpful they are for particular purposes.  Physics, not 
helpful for spiritual purposes.  The Daodejing, not helpful for predicting 
the movement of rocks.

DMB said:
The domain of science is "it", the domain of art is "I" and the domain of 
morality is "we". The problem is a kind of colonization of science into the 
other domians, so that "I" and "we" are treated as "it". This is the 
disaster of modernity. This is reductionism. Scientific materialism flattens 
the world so that everything real is an "it". ... I think the idea is to 
give each kind of truth its due respect, but to also understand the limits 
of its jurisdiction, so to speak.

Matt:
I like that short-hand.  And it puts what happened with the Enlightenment 
philosophers' legacy well.  You deployed it against me for some reason, but 
I'm not sure what that reason is.  I once talked about the limits of 
jurisdiction and you attacked me.  These kinds of limits are what I'm 
talking about when making distinctions between different vocabularies for 
different purposes (for instance, the vocabulary of science for "it", the 
vocab of art for "I", and the vocab of morality for "we").  All "on an 
epistemological par" means is that we no longer think that any single one of 
the vocabularies is closer to reality (which is what then makes us think we 
should have that vocabulary colonize the other ones).  We are 
antiessentialists.  There is no illusion to cut through.  There are simply 
better ways of speaking for different purposes.

DMB said:
We've had discussions in which, if I recall, you denied there was a 
distinction between literal truth and metaphorical truth on the basis that 
all truth is metaphorical.

Matt:
Whoa, no, no.  I don't think I've ever said that.  If I did, it was a 
mistake.  However, my understanding of the literal/metaphorical distinction 
is different from yours and I can perhaps see why you'd construed me as 
saying that.  You want to say that literal truth and metaphorical truth "are 
different modes of expression."  I think this is parallel to our 
disagreement about where we cut the distinction between static patterns and 
DQ as different "ways of knowing."  Like before, I have other specific 
philosophical reasons for making the distinction as I do, but I don't think 
it puts us necessarily on totally different paths.  The way I would want to 
make the distinction between literal and metaphorical is that truth can only 
be ascribed to the literal, and by literal I mean words that have a 
well-worn language game, an established context, that can generate meaning.  
A metaphor is something that has no immediate meaning because there is no 
context--we have to generate that context to create the meaning.  And once 
the context is created, the metaphor dies, and we are left with the literal.

So, say we take your example.  The first time somebody said to someone else 
that "you're a tiger", the natural response is a crazy look.  "What the hell 
are you talking about?"  The person who said it then would explain the 
context in which its to be taken: "You have this sensual, feline look about 
you."  It sounds like a pedantic explanation of something we do 
instinctively, but there are specific effects in the philosophy of language 
by saying this, part of further dismantling of logical positivism's legacy.  
In the end, I can't see that much current difference between saying that 
there are metaphorical truths and literal truths and saying, as I would, 
that there are different contexts to produce truths.  The effect of being 
flattered or looking quizically at the person saying "you're a tiger", on my 
view, are produced by different contexts that create two different literal 
truths.  This type of view of language is what produces the slogan "metaphor 
is the root of language," which is possibly what led you to ascribe the "all 
truth is metaphorical."  But I take saying metaphor is the root of language 
to be the same as Pirsig saying that rhetoric, our "analogues upon analogues 
upon analogues", is the root of dialectic.  Thus when Pirsig says ealier in 
ZMM that there are frontal truths and lateral truths, I love the sentiment 
that leads him to say it, but I reinterpret it to get rid of the notion of a 
"lateral _truth_".  Lateral shifts are, I think, better explained by a shift 
in the root assumptions we use to enable the frontal truths.  A lateral 
shift, say from Q circling S/O to S/O circling Q, doesn't produce _more_ 
truths, it produces _different_ truths, ones that are better (which is shown 
through practice).

So, I don't know if that is still too flat, but I'm not sure what there is 
that's worth fighting about in relation to essentialism and physicalism with 
the metaphor/literal distinction.  I'm not sure what you think I'm leaving 
out.

Matt

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