[MD] Static latching & faith

[Scott Roberts]

DMB,

You accuse me of mixing things up, but what is happening is that you keep 
reading things in to what I say that I am being careful NOT to say, and 
ignoring distinctions that I am being careful to make.

Scott said:
I am asking about Northrop's claim of an "undifferentiated aesthetic
continuum", and about Pirsig's claim that there is value in the inorganic.
We are in agreement that physics-type justification does not apply. So what
does?  ...So they are just assumptions, given that they are not a matter of
direct awareness, at least for a non-mystic. Right?

dmb says:
Oh boy. Here you are asking about radical empiricism, epistemological
empiricism, the MOQ's preference model in subatomic physics, and mysticsim.
That's fine. I think all these elements are inter-related and that it
important to see how they all work together in a coherent way, but you seem
to be mixing them up together. And I'm still not so sure you got my point
about the broader meaning of empiricism

For starters, there is a difference between saying experience comes first
and the direct awareness that mystics report. Northrop's claim does not
depend on the reports of mystics. Radical empiricism does not depend on the
reports of mystics. They are both consistent with those reports as part of a
larger picture and both fit coherently within the MOQ, but radical
empiricism itself is basically a rejection of the assumptions of SOM. It
does not replace subjects and objects with a different assumption about
experience, it just starts with experience. That experience is given a name
to distinguish it from SOM's sensory experience. Direct experience is one of
those names and primary empirical reality is another. As Ant tells it, we
have to make some qualifications on this very score to make Northrop's
claims fit exactly, but basically his categories of experience are getting
at the same thing. See, its not "just an assumption". Its not an assumption
at all. It is the rejection of assumptions. It is the rejection of the
assumptions contained in the narrow meaning of empiricism.

Scott:
What Northrop is doing with the phrase "undifferentiated aesthetic 
continuum" is rephrasing mystical truth. He is distinguishing it from 
"differentiated aesthetic continuum". The experience of the non-mystic is 
apparently all differentiated. This differentiated experience is our normal 
(non-mystical) experience. We jump off hot stoves because they are hot, 
which is different from their being cold. We don't need to think "this is 
hot and not cold" -- our bodies have already made that differentiation. We 
have an immediate experience of value on seeing a multi-hued sunset because 
it is different from a humdrum sunset. And so on. What the mystic tells us 
is that, after a lot of discipline, then it is possible to experience the 
*undifferentiated* aesthetic continuum as such. In MOQ terms, this would be 
experiencing "pure DQ" -- DQ in the absence of all SQ. Or as Merrell-Wolff 
puts: consciousness of absence of all objects, which he calls Nirvana. Now 
what the mystics also say is that, once one Realizes the undifferentiated 
aesthetic continuum, one can further Realize that the undifferentiated 
continuum and the differentiated continuum are "the same". But without this 
Realization, one does not Know that. So for you to say that "direct 
awareness" IS the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" is a misreading of 
Northrop.

DMB continued:
I refered to the hot stove example last time, in fact, to avoid the
confusion between the claims of radical empiricism and the claims of
philosophical mysticism. Pirsig humorously points out that mystics would
jump off the stove faster than the positivists who think of the experience
in terms of pre-existing stoves and pre-existing sitters, but there is
nothing particularly assumptive, theoretical or mystical about burning your
ass. The hot stove example simply points out that you "know" its bad even
before you have a chance to think about the cause of that badness or
otherwise explain it. You "know" the low value of the situation before you
have any "idea" about what's happening. That kind of direct awareness is
different from a mystical realization. Its something like the difference
between an infant and an old sage. The infant is not yet differentiated the
world while the old sage has gone through that process and then learned to
see through it, so to speak. In some sense, they both have "direct
awareness", but from opposite ends. The dead and the unborn are both not
alive, but that doesn't mean they are the same thing.

Scott:
All true, but the hot stove example says nothing about an *undifferentiated* 
aesthetic continuum. Babies differentiate, between, say, pleasure and pain. 
If they didn't, they wouldn't laugh and cry. Dogs differentiate or they 
wouldn't be wagging their tails at some times and snarling at others.

DMB continued:
Whew! And that's just a brief attempt to untangle radical empiricism from
one of these confusions. I haven't even touched on the preference model of
epistemological pluralism. See, one of the reasons I complain about these
constant confusions is that its such a chore to untangle them...

Scott:
It would help if you didn't confuse the differentiated aesthetic continuum 
with the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum.

dmb said to Scott:
Who said (radical empiricism) was "just as straightforward" (as sensory
empiricism)? Isn't my repeated point just the opposite? If the broader
meaning were "just as straightforward" then in what sense would it be
broader? Again, you claim that you understand this distinction, but here you
demonstate that you are confused about the difference.

Scott replied:
No, I think this is the first time in this thread that you have made the
point that some kinds of direct awareness are esoteric, available *as*
direct awareness only to very few, that they lack straightforward
justifications. So with these two claims (the undifferentiated aesthetic
continuum, and that there is value in the inorganic) is there any
justification other than "mystics say so"?

dmb says:
As I was saying, you've mixed up a few different things in these kinds of
questions and each one of them would be "justified" in different ways. The
preference model (value in the inorganic) does not depend on the reports of
mystics just as radical empiricism does not rely on the reports of mystics.

Scott:
True, the existence of the preference model does not depend on mystical 
experience, but the *choice* of the preference model over a causal model 
depends on something, no? Is that choice radically empiric? No. Nor is it 
traditionally empiric. The MOQ makes that choice. Why?

DMB continued:
Again, this elements supports each other and are consistant with each other
within the larger framework of the MOQ and that's a good thing. But its
probably better to concentrate on one element at a time, which is what I was
trying to do. I was focused on the difference between radical empiricism and
regular empiricism, but your questions about justificaton don't make much
sense insofar as they introduce elements I was not speaking to. And they are
introduced as if I were. Oh God, its a mess in so many ways. This time I'm
sort of just trying to explain a little bit about why radical empiricism is
not the same thing as mysticism or the preference model and such. In that
sense I'm still focused on the MOQ's radical empiricism, even if I'm just
saying what it is NOT.

Scott:
I agree, they are not the same thing. What I am trying to get is why the MOQ 
makes the claims it does. It claims to start with a radically empiric basis, 
but what I am trying to demonstrate is that with the claim of inorganic 
value it either must invoke mystic claims or it must be violating its claim 
to be "pure empiricism" -- radical or otherwise.

Scott said:
Now you also said a while back that their justification comes from assuming
them and working out, based on assuming them, an adequate and coherent
metaphysics. True, that is a kind of justification. The problem is that one
can work out equally adequate and coherent metaphysics by assuming something
else, perhaps a different sort of mystical revelation.

dmb replies:
Hmmm. The only thing I want to say here is, yes, of course one can work out
other, equally adequate and coherent metaphysical systems. Why in the world
would you see this as a problem? Isn't one of the aims of the MOQ to allow
more than one construction of things? Isn't the whole post-modern period all
about the rejection of a single, exclusive truth? The fact that more than
one good theory can be used to explain the very same set of experiences is
to be celebrated and enjoyed, no? That's why scientists and philosophers
need to be artists and all that.

Scott:
The problem I have with it is that certain notions from Merrell-Wolff and 
Plotinus, mainly the the reality of a superhuman, superconceptual -- in fact 
for all intents and purposes supernatural -- Intellect cannot be squared 
with the MOQ, at least not without pretty much starting over.

Scott said:
My metaphysics in particular is somewhat different from the MOQ in that it
is based on slightly different mystically based writing (that of
Merrell-Wolff and of Plotinus) than the sort of mysticism that Pirsig seems
to be familiar with. Since the difference is slight, there is a good deal of
overlap, but there are differences.

dmb says:
Of course there are some differences between Pirsig and other thinkers, but
I think you have repeatedly exaggerated and distorted those difference. I've
tried to show you this several times in the past and we already have enough
to deal with, but I just have to say that you really could and should be
using these thinkers to elaborate and explain the MOQ. I think this is
pretty much demanded by the content of their writings and the natural
affinity they have with the MOQ. See, I don't think they are different on
anything of importance.

Scott:
When I raised these differences in the past (by saying that from 
Merrell-Wolff and Plotinus one must start talking about Dynamic Intellect, 
and that static patterns of value are best seen as conceptual) you did 
nothing but shout and scream that I was being illogical or worse. So forgive 
me if I have doubts that what is involved is just elaborating and explaining 
the MOQ.

DMB continued:
 It just that they offer detail that Pirsig couldn't
afford to cover within the scope of his project. I think philosopical
mysticism is supposed to be broad enough to accomodate a wide variety of
more specific forms. This is perfectly consistent with the way Pirsig
identifies DQ with religious mysticism, but supports no particular sect or
version, East or West, ancient or modern.

Scott:
Philosophical mysticism, yes, but the MOQ as one philosophical mysticism is 
incompatible, in some ways, with others.

Scott continued:
...The point is that the choice of metaphysics thus rests on faith -- in one
sort of revelation or another -- followed by reasoning using that revelation
as a basis. I see nothing wrong with this, in fact, I think that is the only
way one can do metaphysics, but of course you can't possibly accept it
because Pirsig claims that his so-called empiricism is to be distinguished
from faith, while as I see it, by broadening the definition of 'empirical'
to include direct awareness of any sort, including mystical
experience, means that the line between the empirical and the faith-based is
obscured.

dmb replies:
Metaphysics rests on revelation and faith? Its "the only way one can do
metaphysics"?! Wow. I definately have some problems with that assertion and
it confirms my hunches about your whole approach. I think if you understood
radical empiricims properly you would see that it does not rest on faith.
Again, the broadening of the definition of empiricism is a rejection of
sense experience as the starting point of all real knowledge, a rejection of
the narrow definition. It does not rely on "revelations" or the reports of
mystics.

Scott:
True, radical empiricism does not rely on faith. But the MOQ does so rely. 
Or at least on non-empirical assumptions (radical or otherwise, if one 
excludes mystical experience).

DMB continued:
 The negative experience that prompts one to jump off a hot stove
does not rest on faith or any kind of assumption. But I'm actually glad to
see this admission about faith and revelation as the basis of your
metaphysics. Ha. I knew it. You're a clothset theist just as i suspected.

Scott:
Huh? I've acknowledged many times that I depend on mystical revelation. How 
on earth does that make me a theist, though? It is faith that keeps a 
Zennist's butt on the meditation cushion year after year. It is faith that 
leads the non-theist Buddhist to believe they will be reincarnated in a Pure 
Land. But of course, since you take seriously Pirsig's extremely 
close-minded definition of faith, naturally you're not going to accept what 
I say.

Scott said he is:
...someone who has no direct awareness of an undifferentiated aesthetic
continuum, and wants to know what Northrop is talking about when he says
"undifferentiated aesthetic continuum", and wants to know why the concept
should be taken seriously. Care to answer?

dmb says:
I've been answering. You just don't like the answer, won't accept the
answer, don't understand the answer or whatever. And you keep finding new
ways to avoid engaging with my answers too. Here, for example, you complain
that you have "no direct awareness of an undifferentiated continuum" and so
you don't know what Northrop is talking about.

Scott:
I said "someone". I know what Northrop is talking about because I am 
familiar with the mystical literature. I am asking about why someone who is 
not, and whose everyday experience is all differentiated (pleasure and pain, 
now seeing blue, now seeing red, now smelling this or that, now thinking 
this or that, now angry, now happy, etc. etc.) would be expected to know 
what Northrop means by *undifferentiated* aesthetic continuum. The 
'aesthetic' can be explained straightforwardly (as Pirsig did in ZMM) but 
the 'undifferentiated' -- that's is not at all a matter of direct awareness.

DMB said:
 This is exactly what I'm
referring to when I say there are no justifications for this claim. I don't
mean that you've stumped me with the question. I mean that there is no
answer because there is no question. The question is bogus. It makes no
sense.

Scott:
But it does make sense. There is a justification, namely, mystics say so. 
And if one has faith in mystics, and is willing to spend years in 
disciplining yourself then one too might have direct awareness of the 
undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, just as we all now have direct 
awareness of the differentiated aesthetic experience.

DMB said:
 All I can do is try to show you why it makes no sense. How many frogs
are in the oven if you're rolling down a hill and your wheels fall off?
Would you feel stumped by the inability to answer such nonsense? Your
question isn't that silly, but you see my point. Anyway, you don't need to
have a mystical experience to understand what radical empiricism is, you
only need to understand empiricism. And I don't know how "seriously" you
should take it. If your aim is to understand radical empiricism and/or the
MOQ, then its helpful to look at Northrop's categories of experience as well
as James and positivism and such.

Scott:
Right. It is helpful to add Northrop's categories, but it is also to be 
noted that appeal is being made here to the mystical sort of experience. One 
can't get from understanding radical empiricism alone to the MOQ.

This is another one of those spots where you've confused mysticism with
radical empiricism. Again, the mystic might be the first one off that stove,
but anyone of any persusion will get off. No matter what your assumptions
are, no matter what faith you hold, you know its bad and that's the first
thing you know ahead of everything else. This is the claim of radical
empiricism. This primary experience has various labels like "direct
awareness" and "the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" but they all refer
to that first thing we know, that initial sense of value.

Scott:
Here you are wrong about the labels, as explained above. If there were 
nothing differentiated about the hot stove experience, there would be 
nothing to get you off.

DMB continued:
 But its not just
that you're confusing the infant with the sage and the beginning with the
end. Another reason it makes no sense to complain about never having any
"direct awareness of an undifferentiated continuum" is that both words refer
to the same experience.

Scott:
See above. They don't.

DMB continued:
 So here you are complaining that you've never
experienced experience. Its like saying driving can't be taken seriously as
a real activity because you've never driven driving. Again, its not really
that silly, but you see my point. This is what I was referring to when I
accused you of treating this primary empirical reality as some of thing or
entity or realm that we experience. But the label does not refer to some
thing we become aware of. We don't have direct awareness OF a continuum. The
continuum IS that direct awareness. You don't have experience OF experience.
You just have experience.

Scott:
Right, I just experience, but this is all ignoring the word 
"undifferentiated".

Scott said:
But the point is that one can have epistemological pluralism and one can
start with experience, rather than pre-supposing subjects and objects,
without changing the meaning of 'empiricism'. Just say: "in addition to
sense-based experience there is rational and transcendental experience" and
say "we will not presuppose that experience comes only in subject/object
form". Now by broadening the meaning of 'empirical', all that has been
accomplished is to *lessen the value of the word*. In the narrower meaning,
if someone says such-and-such is empirical, then one has a good idea of how
to justify it (with the eye of the flesh). With the broadened meaning one
has no idea how to justify it, or if it can be justified at all -- in
particular, one doesn't know if it is just being assumed or not.

dmb says:
You think it makes sense to reject pre-existing subjects and objects in
favor of starting with experience and still retain the narrow meaning of
empiricism? I don't. You think the value of the narrow meaning is lessened
by the broader meaning? I don't. I think both of those assertions are just
more evidence of your confusion. You keep insisting that we limit ourselves
to the narrow meaning despite my repeated attempts to explain that radical
empiricism MEANS rejecting those very limits. Rejecting those pre-existing
subjects and objects IS a rejection of that narrow meaning. Its all part of
the same set of assumptions, the assumptions that tell us that subjects
experience the objective world through their senses. SOM and sensory
empiricism are such that it makes no sense to reject subjects and objects
whle retaining sesory empiricism, the narrow definition. If you take
epistiemological pluralism on board and thereby add mental and
transcendental to sensory experience, then its not logically possible to
retain the narrow definition of empiricism.

Scott:
Not logically possible? Of course it is logically possible, as Wilber 
showed. One can quite easily distinguish knowledge that involves the senses 
from knowledge that doesn't.

DMB continued:
 If you add you have broadened.
Yes, sensory empiricism is clear and simple. So what? The problem with that
kind of empiricism is that it is TOO SIMPLE. It says the only real things
are things that can be known through the senses. Its says physical reality
is the only real reality.

Scott:
Nonsense. This would only be true if one also maintained that "only 
empirical knowledge is valid". So what we have is that IF one maintains that 
only empirical knowledge is valid, THEN one must expand the meaning of 
'empirical' to extend to anything at all which we use in our metaphysics. A 
simpler solution -- one that avoids confusion -- is to deny that only the 
empirical (in the traditional sense) is valid.

DMB said:
 All of postmodernism is opposed to this narrow
meaning. This narrow meaning is what gives us amoral scientific objectivity
and the whole representational paradigm. I think you do not understand why
its important to get out of that narrow SOM box. I think you insistance on
the narrow meaning is just evidence of that you don't get that.

Scott:
See above.

Scott said:
Why should adding a sense have anything to do with SOM assumptions? Surely
we can talk about vision, hearing, etc., without assuming SOM. Why not a
sense of value? (And remember, that's Pirsig's term).

dmb replies:
We can talk about vision and hearing without assuming a subject who sees and
hears things? How? How do you talk about sense experience without those
assumptions? Seriously. I really wanna know what you mean because that seems
like a logical impossibility.

Scott:
By saying "there is seeing (colors, shapes, etc.)" and "there is hearing 
(tones, bangs, etc.)". I see no difference between talking about sense 
experience without assuming subjects and objects as talking about any other 
kind of experience. There is sense experience, and there is thinking 
experience, and their is emotional experience, and there is mystical 
experience. Why is one more difficult to talk about without subjects and 
objects than another?

Scott said:
I never implied that the undifferentiated continuum -- or anything else
--was the CAUSE of experience (strawman, anyone?). I was only asking why
Northrop postulates the term. All of my direct awareness is differentiated.

dmb replies:
You keep making these kind of denials, but you've utterly failed to engage
my explainations as to where I find you implications. Maybe you didn't
INTEND to imply that the continuum was the CAUSE of experiece, but as I
tried to explain in the case of your complaints about never having a direct
experience OF the continuum, the implication is there anyway.

Scott:
You see how not paying attention to what I say causes confusion on your 
part? I was specifically referring to the *undifferentiated* aesthetic 
continuum, not to the aesthetic continuum. And I carefully avoid phrases 
like "experience OF the continuum" precisely so you wouldn't misread what I 
was saying as you did here. But it appears to be of no use.

DMB continued:
In that case,
your complaints suggest that the continuum is a pre-existing reality that
causes our experience OF it the way red things are assumed to cause us to
experience red. In almost every case, I quote you and then explain where I'm
seeing your implications and assumptions. I'm constatly pointing to these
implicatons repeating the specific comments that led me to that conclusion.

Scott:
No, you are constantly *reading in* these implications and assumptions IN 
SPITE OF my efforts to phrase things so they are not there.

DMB continued:
If you want me to take these denials seriously you're really going to have
to engage with that rather than just pretend I'm setting up straw men. This
generous treatment should actually make it pretty easy for you to make any
correction, clarifications and denials. As to the last sentence, I don't
know what that's supposed to mean. As I understand it, direct awareness and
undifferentiated awareness are two names for the same experience so that
your last comment basically says, "All my undifferentiatied experience is
differentiatied".  It makes about as much sense as saying all my wet
experiences are dry.

Scott:
Your understanding of Northrop is wrong. Only a mystic Knows that 
differentiated and undifferentiated awareness are the same. For non-mystics, 
direct awareness is differentiated.

dmb had said:
See, Pirsig's radical empiricism doesn't make any claims about experience so
much as attack the metaphysical assumptions of those who do. Unlike the
positivists and other SOMers, the MOQ asserts no assumptions about what is
required for experience to occur. It just begins with experience and any
causal explanations come later, as in the hot stove example, which is
another way to explain this same idea. But then, if memory serves, you
hacked that one up badly too.

Scott replied:
I never said he did assert any assumption about what is required for
experience to occur. What I have been asking for is the justification for
talking about an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, or for saying that
there is value in the inorganic. You have now answered this: there is none,
so I assume he assumes these two claims because mystics say so. So it sure
looks to me like the MOQ is based on faith in mystics.

dmb says:
I could spend pages and pages on each sentence in this paragraph, each of
which is more confused than the next. But what really kills me is that the
whole thing is absurd. Supposedly you are responding to my explanation as to
what radical empiricism does and does not claim, but your response is
completely irrelevant to anything I said. And somehow, my explanations about
why your non-sensical questions have no answer have been construed to mean
that the MOQ rests on faith and the word of mystics. And I did not say that
the Northrop's ideas about the categories of experience cant't be justified.
I only said that you can't observe them with the senses, that the continuum
can't be justified in terms of narrow sesnory empiricism.

Scott, I've tried very hard to be polite and patient during this
conversation. I've tried to put my feelings aside and focus on the substance
of the isssues. I realize that its no fun to be repeatedly described as
"confused", but you gotta understand that this is the nicest word I could
think of. That's about as polite as I can be without being totally
inaccurate or dishonest about my perceptions. So instead of giving in to my
first impulse, which is to scream insulting things about the quality of your
mind, I've tried to provide detailed explanations about where I see errors
and to provide detailed explanations about the correct way to understand
Prsig's empiricism. I've tried to show you exactly what I'm criticizing and
what I'm offering as an alternative, but none of this seems to have any
effect at all. Its like talking to a wall - or a Republican.

Despite my efforts there seems to be no glimmer of comprehension and I
really don't know where to go from here. Its like you don't really want to
understand, like you're playing some kind of game. Maybe you're completely
sincere and totally honest about the whole thing, but I don't want to
believe that. If your apparent inability to grasp radical empiricism is
sincere the implications are even worse. That's where the insulting remarks
about your intelligence would come into it. Sorry, but that's how I feel. So
what's the deal, dude? Are you playing a game where the object is to be as
obtuse as possible or are you just a very bad philosopher? Right now, it
looks like its both.

Scott:
I hope you realize that I am thinking about you just as you are thinking 
about me (being obtuse and being a bad philosopher). I do think you are 
sincere, but I also know that most of your complaints about what I say are 
based on not paying attention to what I actually say. Many times I have 
pointed this out, but you never come back and say "Ok, I see you didn't say 
that". You just go on making the same misreadings as if my protests about 
previous misreadings didn't matter.

- Scott