[MD] Ghost buster

[david buchanan]

Arlo and all:

I'm not sure what this debate was about, so I'm probably going off on a 
tanget or just changing the topic outright. That's why I changed the thread 
name. Anyway, I'd like to suggest that the meaning of these passages isn't 
in support of ghosts so much as it is an attack on naive realism, common 
sense. Well, "attack" is too strong a word, but....

For those who haven't noticed or would like another look, here are the 
quotes again. More comments below...

>[Arlo quoted ZMM]
>"It’s completely natural," I say, "to think of Europeans who believed in
>ghosts or Indians who believed in ghosts as ignorant. The scientific point
>of view has wiped out every other view to a point where they all seem
>primitive, so that if a person today talks about ghosts or spirits he is
>considered ignorant or maybe nutty. It’s just all but completely impossible
>to imagine a world where ghosts can actually exist."
>
>John nods affirmatively and I continue.
>
>"My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn’t that superior.
>IQs aren’t that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as
>intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely
>different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as
>real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern man. In that
>sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you
>know."
>
>"What?"
>
>"Oh, the laws of physics and of logic—the number system—the principle of
>algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so
>thoroughly they seem real.
>
>[Arlo then added]
>I'd say he'd quite readily acknowledge his metaphysics is inhabited by 
>ghosts.

dmb replies:
In their context "spirits are quite as real as atoms". I guess that's the 
main point here. But it seems to me that defending ghosts is not part of 
Pirsig's attack on SOM. What he's doing here, I think, is pointing out that 
"atoms" are just as fictional as all the other explanations that have come 
and gone and that some day such beliefs may even seem just as ignorant or 
nutty. And I think this ties in with the whole 
essentialism/anti-essentialism thing Matt K used to discuss here. So this 
brings us back to that constructivist sort of thing, but with metaphysics. 
Its not that all the physicists are hallucinating. Its perfectly reasonable 
to believe in atoms. But when it comes right down to it, atoms and laws (and 
the self and the world and just every little "thing" that common sense tells 
us is real) are just deductions from experience, not reality. Its all a 
reasonable fiction, a habit of mind drawn from the patterns of experience, 
but if I understand what anti-essentialism means in this grandest of 
metaphysical contexts then there is no there there. Oh, its a real 
deduction. This is part of the world,   part the mythos we inhabit and it 
works pretty well. Just ask those guys over in Hiroshima about the power of 
our ghosts. They know it works. I'm just saying, these passages are an 
attack on the dogmas of the church of reason and I think ghosts are used to 
undermine the rigidity of our beliefs in them. I think he's saying that the 
medieval church and the church or reason both have this tendency to assert 
the existence of unseen entities in order to explain what can be seen, to 
invent realities to explain experience. These explanations, these 
inventions, are then taken as real. And this goes way, way back. An 
invisible, eternal world parallel to this visible, corruptible one? The 
Prime Mover?  The substantial forms? Atoms, strings, quarks? They're 
deductions from experience. And they more or less work for a while, but the 
experience is more real than the deductions that follow. Ghosts. Its okay to 
believe in them as long as you believe they are ghosts, that they're not 
real unless you believe in them. is that subtle or just confusing?

Help!
dmb

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