[MD] Flying Spaghetti Monsters

[Ham Priday]

Hey, David --



> dmb says:
> Ham, most of what you're saying is just common sense
> mixed with a little essentialist theology.

I like to think so ;-).

> You keep repeating things like "experience requires a
> sentient organism" as if this is some wild new concept
> nobody here has ever heard before. Trust me. Every
> person in the english speaking world thinks they inhabit
> (or are) a body. This is not news, not even to MOQers.
>
> As you undoubtedly recall from your careful reading of Pirsig,
> the human infant is not born with the knowledge of itself as a
> distinct organism nor is it born with the ability to recognize
> distinct "objects" in its experience.

The post-partum infant is the existential locus of all that will be
consciously experienced.  Whether this definition qualifies psychologically
as self-awareness (i.e., "knowledge of itself") or not, every individual
establishes his or her personal being as the subjective identity of
sensation and experience.  It is this phenomenon that I call "proprietary
awareness."

> Experience, as we say around here, is undifferentiated. It is
> experience in the absence of any such distinctions. The infant
> learns to recognize itself as it learns to make distinctions in
> experience. They experiment a lot, they begin to acquire
> language and in time inherit all kinds of distinctions from the
> language and culture. This matrix of distinctions is reality as
> we know it.
>
> Pirsig is not making this up. You can take a look at the literature.
> Developmental psychology has studied the formation of self identity
> in the early stages of life. The stuff I've been looking at lately is a
bit
> tangled up with gender studies and some other Freudian stuff,
> but I'd guess a person could find some straight-up data on the
> formation of self concepts if he wanted to.

I have no problem with this developmental chronology as you've presented it,
except that one cannot have experience "in the absence of distinctions."
ALL experience is differentiated.  It is Difference which causes the
individual to experience (i.e., differentiate specific objects or events).
If you had said "Value is experience in the absence of any distinctions," I
could accept that definition.  I defer to your expertise as to whether this
constitutes a semantic disagreement or an epistemological one.  But the
distinction is important in understanding my ontology.

> Also, I think Pirsig adopts the "radical empiricism" of
> William James precisely because it gets at that same undifferentiated
> experience. It's not that we can go back to infancy (echoes of being
> born again here, hang on to your faith-based hat). But the idea of
> being a dead man, of killing the static patterns, is to rediscover,
> as an adult, the undifferentiated experience. We are so habituated
> to interpreting experience through the matrix of distinctions given
> to us in the acquisition of language that it takes a real jolt or a real
> effort to even see that it is an interpretation.

Again, if you were to substitute "value" for "experience", the only quarrel
I'd have with your assertion is that the "matrix of distinctions" is due to
"the acquisition of language."
Your implication is that word definitions create what is experienced.  The
distinctions are created first by breaking value into the five types of
sensory awareness, then by intellectually framing this perception within the
space/time mode of human experience, and finally by "objectifying" this data
as a cognizant entity (which can then be labelled for recall from memory as
a particular experience.)

[snip]

> Yes, the idea that people are organisms living in an objective reality
> is something we all understand. That is common sense. That is SOM.
> That is exactly what Pirsig's work is meant to attack. It works most
> of the time, in any ordinary situation. It makes a great deal of sense.
> If it didn't work so well it would have come to be common sense.
> But it has some problems and some limitations. And one of the
> biggest problems is that it traps people into thinking reality can be
> no other way. It traps people into thinking that every experience
> must be explained within certain terms, the very terms you repeatedly
> insist upon. Please don't take this as mere insult, Ham, this is a
> sincerely made point that I hope you'll ponder.
> As I see it, your perspective is a textbook example of SOM,
> of the central problem. The MOQ is the solution to that problem
> and you're offering the problem as if it were a solution to the MOQ.

I realize you are sincere in your criticism, David, and I don't take it as
an insult at all.  In fact, it strikes me as kinda funny.  The problem you
see is that my solution is to undo Pirsig's contribution.  But it really
isn't as simple as that.

Why does Pirsig want to attack SOM?  Why are people "trapped" into thinking
they can't change their reality?  Will giving up common sense and pretending
that SOM is a myth get rid of our problems?  I don't think so.  I don't
think SOM is the problem that troubles mankind today.  The problem is that
man has been lured into an artificial reality that is destroying his sense
of value, his spiritual roots, his moral compass, and his belief that life
has meaning or purpose.  What has brought this about is the rise of logical
positivism --
the view that man is a "possession" of nature, that the observable world is
the only reality, and that this reality is independent of the self or any
"supernatural" or transcendental source.  That "enlightened scientific" view
isn't SOM; it's pure Objectivism.

Let me be equally sincere with you.  As I see it, Pirsig wants to have his
cake and eat it too.  He wants to espouse a philosophy that is commensurate
with postmodern thought.  So, instead of attacking Objectivism, he rejects
the Subject of existence and posits Quality (DQ) as the nature of
(objective) reality.  As the source of reality, Quality must subsume all of
the properties and attributes that were once thought to be innate to man,
including his "selfness".  The world is "good" and "moral" by its own nature
(Quality), so man need only "flow with it" in a Buddha-like trance.
Intellect is not something that man develops, but a level of Quality that he
must "evolve to".  The goal of this evolutionary progress (in existential
time) is to move toward "betterness"; but this is a goal already conceded to
Quality, not incumbent upon the individual.  The MoQ leaves no role for the
individual.  Whatever connection a human being has to DQ has meaning only in
the collective sense, and then only if he denies his individuality, not to
mention his spiritual beliefs or aspirations.

[snip]

> Here you are pushing essentialim and theism. The MOQ is anti-theistic and
> anti-essentialist. Again, you've absurdly offered the problem as if it
were
> a solution. I would also object to the assertion that your epistemology is
> simple or plausible. I don't even think its an epistemology. If you posit
a
> divine being as an explanation for experience, then you have explained
> nothing at all. It just pushes the question back onto an unknowable and
> untestable fiction. Same with essences. This is just re-cycled Aquinas.
Its
> syllogistic Aristotelian nonsense.

I am offering an essentialist perspective as an alternative to theism.  I
don't believe in a "divine being" and there is nothing theistic about my
philosophy.  Essence is no more theistic than Value or Quality.  The
quotations I've cited from Medieval theologians such as Eckhart and Cusa are
used to support my ontology, not to push theism.  Spirituality is not
theism; neither is creation or transcendence.  I suggest that you're looking
at these concepts with a jaundiced eye and, like other anti-theists, are too
anxious to condemn them as "religious baggage."

> See, experience is not CAUSED by god or the prime mover
> or by the clash between subject and objects. We can't even say
> its a feature of biological organisms, exactly. These are all just
> invented explanations for something we can't know. Asking what
> causes experience might just be a nonsense question. And what
> the heck is an essence, anyway?  Sounds made up too me. The
> MOQ says that reality and experience are identical and quite
> enough reality for me, thank you very much. I don't care for the
> idea that there is an invisible world that explains and drives this
> one. Such a notion is not supported by any evidence and
> asserting a mystery as an explanation for experience is a logical
> fallacy too. In short, its not plausible. This is it, baby.
> Its all you get. The MOQ also says that Aristotle was an
> "asshole", thus you are not even in the right time zone and
> you're definately gonna miss the game.

Philosophies are all based on explanations for things we can't know.  In
that sense, even the Quality thesis is an "invention".  That does not rule
out the value of a well-developed hypothesis.  If you demand "empirical
evidence" for every assertion, you might as well join the objectivists.  The
meaning of Essence is exactly as the dictionary defines it: "the permanent
as contrasted with the accidental element of being; the real or ultimate
nature of a thing as opposed to its existence; the significance or core
meaning of a proposition; the value or substantive nature of a thing; that
which is indispensable".

If you had read my thesis carefully, you would know that I'm not especially
fond of what Aristotle did with Plato's idealism.  It was Aristotle who
started the ball moving toward scientific objectivism by cataloguing the
"essences" of "discrete particulars".

Thanks for expressing your concerns, and for the opportunity to address
them.

Regards,
Ham