[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[David M]

Hi Scott/Matt

Very interesting stuff from both of you.

What I would like to say about anti-essentialism
is that it rejects all essentialisms, and therefore
ends up with a very simple and obvious ontology,
i.e. that it is all contingent, it may all have been different,
the universe is a free-form-verse. It may have repeat
lines in it for some reason, and there could be no science
without this SQ/repeats/order, but bar the repeats it is
all DQ, creative, disordered. Or equally it is all a matter
of agency, for me agency is what collapses the wave function
to reduce the possible to the actual, so that the under-determined
(the lack of precedent to repeat) can be actual and not just
suspended superpositions.

Idealism vs materialism. Well there is stuff we sense without too
much cultural interpretation like colours or wetness or hardness
and can point at so we call these material, and there is stuff that
requires culture, like linking up a connection between ice, water
and steam, or making some paper special and calling it money,
so these are ideas, and they are both real, but there are important
differences and we need both to have any chance of saying something
as basic as that the world exists.

Consciousness, well that just seems to be what you get by being
only a part of a greater whole so that the 'I' ain't everything and
can acknowledge that there is a vast Other than transcends
and is a source and target of change. Consciousness is the
experience and action of change. What else could it be?

As for rocks, well they are big on repeats and inactivity, but if observed 
over
millions of years probably come across as alot more dynamic.

So guys, what's your problem? In what way do you think we currently
don't have a full understanding of reality, what are the key problems?

David M







----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Roberts" <jse885 at localnet.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism


> Matt,
>
> Matt said:
> Mmm, indeed, I have been ignoring Rorty's "every" in his definition.  I 
> was
> going "off book" as it were, but a couple of days ago I went back to look 
> at
> that particular essay and noticed that same thing.  So I've been 
> ruminating
> about that.  (It just goes to show how similarly we reason; I had the
> strongest hunch you were going to mention it just insofar as its the place 
> I
> would first attack.)
>
> But since I've been trying to make whatever-it-is-that-science-does
> coextensive with physicalism, my inclination is indeed to follow out on 
> the
> consequences of the argument I've been making, that indeed there _is_
> nothing philosophically interesting about physicalism.  That's why I've 
> been
> thrusting _everybody_ willy-nilly into the "physicalist" camp.  Because 
> who
> could deny physics's utility?  The pragmatist project is one of
> philosophical therapy, removing the objects of consternation, making 
> things
> seem less and less philosophically interesting (where "philosophy", in 
> this
> case, is essentially taken to be an armchair, reflective enterprise about
> the roots of reality--i.e., bad essentialistic metaphysics).  I remember
> Rorty pointing out how physicalism/materialism _isn't_ an interesting
> philosophical thesis once one becomes a pragmatist and ties off some
> bleeding epistemological/metaphysical wounds.  (I think he did so in his
> early "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories" paper and in another
> obscure, even earlier paper called "Empiricism, Extensionalism, and
> Reductionism."  Once you take out reductionism, materialism is no longer
> philosophically interesting.  Which means nothing for science and is bad
> only for reductionists.)
>
> Scott:
> I disagree. The word "physicalist" remains useful to identify those whose
> "view of things in general" (VOTIG) allows them to regard neo-Darwinism as
> an adequate and coherent theory, and "non-physicalist" for someone who
> rejects it -- either (like me) because I find it inadequate and 
> incoherent,
> or because it conflicts with some other postulate (like God as creator).
> Likewise for other theories, like Dennett's theory of consciousness, and
> Arlo's emergentism. I've complained before about Rorty that sometimes he
> says "the pragmatist holds that..." when it is more the case that "the
> nonreductive physicalist holds that...".
>
> I seems to me that in attempting to make the word 'physicalist'
> philosophically uninteresting, that since my VOTIG is different from 
> yours,
> that leaves you only one stick left to beat me with, and that is to label 
> me
> as an essentialist. Since I try hard to avoid that error (one of the two
> ways of falling off the Buddhist Middle Way -- the other being
> anti-essentialist) I cry foul.
>
> Matt said:
> I don't know if you remember, but sometime last year or something, I wrote
> some posts about consciousness in which I was very insouciant about where 
> we
> put it.  The effect is that, if you describe everything as
> consciousness-dependent, you still have to account for the differences in
> behavior between rocks and people.  You can do that.  I've been arguing in
> variation for years, in agreement with you, that to have values is to have
> consciousness, but that simply means that Pirsig's located a locus of
> consciousness wherever there is a locus of value.  And then you still have
> to account for the apparent behavioral difference between rocks and 
> humans.
> And so the physicalist, neo-Darwinian idea that "there can be physical
> events in the absence of consciousness" just has to be redescribed to
> account for whatever way a person has split the difference.  Because if 
> you
> hold that there are conscious events in the absence of physicality, and we
> take both "conscious" and "physical" in their pre-redefined sense (so that
> there is something like a mind thinking without a brain), then that looks
> analogous to God as Prime Mover, where we posit something that is 
> difficult
> to say what would count as evidence for or against.  And I'm not sure we
> need that posit.
>
> Scott:
> First, I should clarify that as far as I am concerned, since I have no
> personal experience of mind without a brain, all I hold philosophically is
> that there is no reason to assume that mind without a brain is impossible.
> Evidence for this is anecdotal, and I bracket that off when 
> philosophizing.
> More on this below. And in my philosophizing there is even less of 
> anything
> analogous to God as Prime Mover as there is in the MOQ with DQ leaving SQ 
> in
> its wake.
>
> On rocks and humans, a couple of points. One is that what one should be
> comparing a human to is not a rock but physical reality as a whole, which
> includes such niceties as quantum non-locality. The other is that the 
> human
> in considering the human has, in addition to sense data, the ability to
> introspect. With a rock, and with physical reality as a whole, the human
> only has sense data.  To assume that that provides all there is to know
> about physical reality is to be a physicalist.
>
> Scott said:
> Yes, the philosophical difference between you and Merrell-Wolff is that 
> M-W
> says that there is something else that really is the reality behind the
> natural. However, he says that he Knows this (through Identity), so for 
> him
> it is not, strictly speaking, a philosophical difference. It is a 
> difference
> -- for him -- in moving from one "appearance" to another, so to speak. Or
> one could say from one reality to another. Hence if you see Pirsig as
> removing the A/R distinction from mysticism, I would see that as removing
> the only thing that matters in mysticism, namely self-transformation. So I
> would say that mysticism is drained of all that is important by removing 
> the
> A/R distinction -- if that is what it is. After all, M-W would not say 
> that
> the natural is not real. Just that the way we think about it (that is, in
> Cartesian terms) is contingent and, in a sense, false. When the self is
> transformed, so is nature. And a transformed self would reject physicalism
> as I think Rorty defined it.
>
> Matt said:
> I'm not exactly sure I understand you here, but let's start with
> self-transformation.  If you take the wind out of the appearance/reality
> distinction as you've done here (where it doesn't really matter if we call
> it "moving from one 'appearance' to another" or "from one reality to
> another"), it looks like the same thing pragmatists like Rorty say when 
> they
> talk about moving from one language game to another.  We'd be inclined to
> say, under this context, that "when the self is transformed, so is 
> nature."
>
> Scott interrupts:
> For a mystical wannabe like myself, yes, it is moving to a different
> vocabulary -- though I would make it stronger in saying it is moving to a
> different final vocabulary (a different VOTIG). For the mystic, however, 
> no.
> The two common analogies used are that of "like the difference between
> dreaming and being awake" and "like acquiring sight when the normal is 
> being
> blind". This is more than a change of vocabulary. Merrell-Wolff says in
> addition to perception and conception he acquired a new source of 
> knowledge,
> which he calls introception with which he experiences, for example, 
> thoughts
> that "would take many lifetimes to explicate in terms available to 
> relative
> consciousness" (not an exact quote) if it could be done at all, and so
> forth. Such a difference is also involved in what Barfield calls moving 
> from
> our current state of unconscious participation to final participation. In
> other words, the change is immensely more profound than, say, the change 
> in
> nature in the transformation from the medieval world view through 
> Descartes
> to the postmodern.
>
>
> Matt said:
> What you seem to be saying, though, is that you know a priori what a
> transformed self would believe, that it only counts as 
> "self-transformation"
> if a person is transformed from a Cartesian into a Merrell-Wolffian, 
> rather
> than from, say, a Platonist to a pragmatist.  I can't attach any sense to
> that except to reinflate the sails of the appearance/reality distinction,
> but that eventually bounces you outside the bounds of conversation--which,
> if I'm not mistaken, is what you'll agree.  That at a certain point, we 
> are
> dogmatists.  You trust Merrell-Wolff, I trust somebody else.  But taking
> that road just leaves me in the position of having to shrug my shoulders 
> and
> wait for enlightenment to suddenly take me.  Which makes me wonder why you
> (or, say, the mystic) enter in conversation at all, and what the point of
> all the dialectical agility you so evidently display is.  You say it does
> help with self-transformation, but I'm not sure how it would.  But the
> moment of dogmatism is still a few paces away, so let me continue on down.
>
> Scott:
> Again, to clarify, I don't "know a priori" what a transformed self would
> believe. I only know a posteriori that I reject what physicalists believe
> (like neo-Darwinism), and that a posteriori knowledge has the usual
> uncertainty attached. However, because I reject physicalism, I can 
> seriously
> consider what mystics say, to accept it as data, run it through a 
> critique,
> bracket out the weird stuff (like Swedenborg's claiming to talk to dead
> people -- not denying it, but not taking it as given either), and in so
> doing work out details of my VOTIG.
>
> I enter the conversation because Pirsig says things about mysticism which 
> I
> consider suspect, in violation of the tetralemma. And because I think
> Pirsig's VOTIG -- in particular his emergentism -- shows an unwarranted
> attachment to a physicalism that the mystics I read (who survive my
> critique) deny. I wouldn't even try to enter the conversation with a
> Randian, for example, nor with a Christian fundamentalist, nor with a
> reductive physicalist (well -- I might if they show up here, as in my
> fruitless dialogue with Case).
>
> Scott said:
> How, then, could an anti-essentialist argue for neo-Darwinism as an
> explanation for the existence of language and consciousness? If I say that
> physical reality derives from consciousness, does that make me 
> automatically
> an essentialist, while saying the opposite (as a promoter of neo-Darwinism
> must) is somehow able to do this without being an essentialist?
>
> Matt said:
> The idea is that you _can_ say that physical reality derives from
> consciousness and still be an antiessentialist.  You'd just have to do it 
> in
> the manner that Pirsig, under a certain interpretation, does (a way I see
> you as either expressing or flirting with).  This brings us 'round to the
> discussion about Darwinism we've had intermittenly for the last several
> years.  I don't know how to move that conversation forward.  I'm not sure
> I'm sophisticated enough.  The position I've taken from Rorty and Dennett 
> is
> still that "consciousness" (as a demarcation point between us and rocks),
> like everything else, is something that's created in a language-game. 
> That
> being the case, there aren't any features of it that can't be explained by
> an evolutionary tale about the creation of a way of speaking.  And then we
> just move back and tell an evolutionary tale about the creation of 
> language
> itself.  I think we can more or less do those things.
>
> Scott interrupts again:
> Right, and I think that's what I am doing: spinning a different 
> evolutionary
> tale than you are, where in mine consciousness is not something created in 
> a
> language-game, rather that consciousness and semiosis are not separable, 
> and
> not derivable, and so all there is are language games -- some human, most
> not -- rocks are, maybe, comparable to a letter of an alphabet of a 
> grammar
> used in some non-human language game. The fact that some of my spinning is
> influenced by what some mystics say derives from the fact that my 
> rejection
> of Darwin and Dennett allows what they say to be rational. Your acceptance
> of Darwin and Dennett means that some of the stuff that I accept is
> irrational, and so won't be included in your spinning.
>
> Matt said:
> The difference between us is still, I think, that you think there is
> something ineffable about consciousness.  And arguing about that launches 
> us
> high into metaphilosophical territory, about how we tell when something is
> ineffable or not, what we do about it, how we stay conversable, do we want
> to stay conversable, etc.  You don't think consciousness can be explained 
> at
> all and so root it way back into the very fabric of reality.  I'm not sure
> what our conversation would look like, how we talk--in this oxygen 
> depleted
> sector of the mountain--about why we should think one way or the other.
>
> Scott:
> Since I no longer expect to convert you to my way of thinking, all I am
> really trying to do at present is convince you that there is a way to be
> pragmatic and to listen to mystics, to be pragmatic and consider that 
> minds
> without brains are possible, and so forth (in other words, I am rejecting
> your labelling me as essentialist). I do think that consciousness is
> ineffable, but so is just about everything of philosophical interest, 
> value
> for instance. However, I do eff its ineffability to the extent of thinking
> of it in terms of the logic of contradictory identity. Now you would say
> that in my rooting consciousness into the very fabric of reality I am 
> being
> essentialist. But I say that, since I lack the Knowledge through Identity 
> of
> FM-W or Sri Aurobindo, all I am doing is spinning a different evolutionary
> tale than you are. Mine starts with consciousness, value, intellect, and
> semiosis, while yours starts with hydrogen, helium, and physical forces.
>
> Nor would I say that FM-W is essentialist. Of course, as far as I really,
> really know, what he says may be fraudulent or delusional. Assuming that 
> it
> isn't, then -- see above -- he is not just assuming consciousness as being
> at the root of things (like I do), but Knowing it. That is, it is no more
> essentialist for him than I am being essentialist by saying "I am
> conscious". I should also note that supposing he was a fraud or 
> delusional,
> my evolutionary tale doesn't change, since it has grown out of a 
> realization
> of the inadequacy and incoherence of your evolutionary tale that occurred
> before reading FM-W (I was not unaware of mystical alternatives, to be 
> sure,
> but I had more or less naturalized them). Rather it is a case that because 
> I
> have my evolutionary tale that I take FM-W and others seriously, and allow
> them to help me flesh it out.
>
> Matt said:
> I guess I'm not sure what these mystics could convince me of if its simply
> about taking their word for it.  It almost seems like Pascal's wager.  If
> you are an antiessentialist until the day you become transformed (and on
> that day you transcend antiessentialism/essentialism because you Know 
> What's
> Really Going On, and until that day essentialism is the nonsense it is),
> then what reason do I have for listening to the mystics?  I've come to
> antiessentialism by a different route after all.  If they can't 
> communicate
> their knowledge of What's Really Going On, then why should I think
> antiessentialism will get me closer to the day of transcendence?  How is
> this not like "I'll believe in God just in case He's there"?  I'll act 
> like
> a perfect, conversational pragmatist until the day I'm self-transformed.
> Antiessentialism is better--until you are enlightened and loosened the 
> bonds
> of fallen experience.
>
> Scott:
> Firstly, I've never heard of anyone converting because of Pascal's Wager.
> Where it serves (perhaps in modified form, i.e., without God or Heaven or
> Hell) is for the person who already has faith. Faith implies the 
> possibility
> of doubt, and when doubt occurs, the faithful person may say -- the hell
> with doubting, I prefer to maintain my suspension of disbelief to all
> alternatives. Take me. It is certainly possible, since I lack Knowledge
> through Identity about it, that my evolutionary tale is a bunch of crap. 
> But
> every other evolutionary tale that I am aware of is less reasonable to me
> than the one I have. So my only rational alternative to suspending 
> disbelief
> in my tale is a radical skepticism, and I'm not interested in being a
> radical skeptic.
>
> Matt said:
> We have no reason, except for dogmatic trust, to think that the mystics 
> will
> get us closer to self-transformation because for them to give us reasons
> would mean that we've become essentialists---thinking we've found a
> discursive route to What's Really Going On when enlightenment is all about
> stilling our discursive habit of thinking we Know What's Really Going On.
> So we have to be antiessentialists, because it is better, and I can't help
> but think that leaves us in a very willy-nilly position.  For instance,
> what's going to happen to me if I don't start listening to the mystics? 
> I'm
> going to stay fallen?  Which means I'm going to act just like you, an
> antiessentialist (assuming for the sake of argument that we both act like
> consistent antiessentialists).  I can't figure out how I'd be convinced to
> suddenly think I have the possibility of being enlightened---except for 
> the
> totally random event of a mystical vision.  Then I'd be changed.  But 
> before
> that day, I don't have any reason to even desire a mystical vision except 
> in
> the same way I hope to wake up tomorrow with the ability to fly.
>
> Scott:
> I think I've answered these concerns above. It is not a matter of dogmatic
> trust. It is trust that is based on reason.
>
> If you don't want to listen to mystics, then don't. The mystic would
> probably say (condescendingly) that you're not ready for it. I would say,
> you don't because you haven't yet seen how neo-Darwinism is inadequate and
> incoherent, and so mysticism is not something you're likely to listen to 
> in
> a manner in which you'll get much out of it. (I will interject, though, 
> that
> if you should want to spare it a glance, I recommend reading FM-W's 
> chapter
> "A Mystical Unfoldment" in his "Philosophy of
> Consciousness-Without-An-Object", reprinted in "Experience and 
> Philosophy".)
>
> Matt said:
> This brings us around to the shibboleth problem.  Why should I think the
> mystics you tout are speaking the magic words and not some other ones? 
> And,
> even more to the point, why should I think there are magic words to be
> spoken at all?  I'd assume that you'd throw out the possibility of magic
> words as being another piece of essentialism (as I would), but that still
> leaves us waiting to fly.
>
> Scott:
> Why? Reason. Much of what goes under the banner of mysticism is 
> esotericism
> of the Swedenborg sort. It can be bracketed off (neither denied nor
> accepted). Much may be written in a vocabulary the individual reader 
> doesn't
> like. Bernadette Roberts, for example, started out as a Christian and
> remains one. Yet in her books there is a lot that makes sense to me, 
> though
> I tend to recast it in non-theistic terms. In short, reading mystics is a
> matter of dialog between the reader and the text, just like any other 
> text.
> What you are concerned with here is an old problem, readily dealt with by
> anyone who is aware of what Peter Berger calls the Heretical Imperative, 
> in
> the book by that name, that one must make choices among and within all the
> revelations, and the tool for making those choices is rationalist 
> critique.
> I would add Lessing's remark (quoted from memory, so not exact) that
> "revelation is not rational when revealed. Rather, it is revealed to 
> become
> rational." Of course, only those words that can become rational should be
> considered candidates for revelation, and it is up to the reader to make
> that distinction.
>
> Matt said:
> This isn't to say that the mystics may not have words of wisdom to teach 
> us.
>  Not at all.  It isn't to say that my life wouldn't benefit from reading
> them.  To be an intellectual is to be open and curious in search of life
> wisdom.  But I don't, for typical antiessentialistic points we hold in
> common, see why we need to posit a strange looking, dogmatic
> appearance/reality distinction that plays no real part except to point out
> that we all may wake up one day and believe something completely different
> from what we did the day before--specifically that we Know What's Really
> Going On.
>
> To return to the original topic about physicalism and idealism, I'm not
> sure, given my philosophically deflated definition of physicalism, why 
> you'd
> want to stylize yourself as an idealist.  And maybe you wouldn't in this
> case.  It seems to me to be an essentialist mistake.  The scientific
> materialists made the mistake of thinking science got at What's Really 
> Going
> On.  The inverse was the idealists who thought Spirit was What's Really
> Going On.  Its all bouncing particles, no its all idea/spirit.  But if we
> become antiessentialists, we leave that fruitless debate aside, don't we?
> We simply suggest better and more fruitful ways of speaking for different
> purposes, right?  So what is the philosophically useful way to describe
> oneself as an idealist without becoming an essentialist, positing What's
> Really Going On?
>
> Scott:
> We will leave the debate aside because we realize neither of us is going 
> to
> convince the other, but the difference remains (though we might remove the
> capital letters). We have different VOTIG's, different evolutionary tales,
> and as I see it, the words 'physicalist' and 'idealist' still serve to
> characterize yours and mine respectively, while 'anti-essentialist' and
> 'essentialist' do not.
>
> - Scott
>
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