[MD] The birth of subjects and objects

[David M]

Steve

You are quite right that what has been embedded
in the culture (S/O as a metaphysics) is also a
distinction (S/O) that is part of normal development
that is forgetful of its own origins.

David M



Hi Ham, DM, (Bo?, Chris?, Magnus? all)

I'm interested in your comments on an extensive Lila quote to follow...


>> DM:
>>> My point is that to create the conception of a perceiver you have to
>>> divide out of experience something that is not a quality of 
>>> experience
>>> and this is a vain hope.
>>
>> My point is that creating the concept of a perceiver is already done 
>> for
>> us.
>> We each perceive our self as the perceiver.  Why do you deny the 
>> obvious?
>>
>
> DM: I just do not think it is true. The child experiences prior to 
> this.
> First the
> child recognises others and then it comes to conceptualise itself as 
> also
> like
> these others. We act and exist just like animals until we start to 
> become
> self-conscious and for full individual & human self consciousness you 
> need
> language.

Steve:
I think this is right on, DM. I am so glad you brought up "the child" 
in attempting to understand the MOQ. The baby does not perceive himself 
as the perceiver as Ham suggests. I think it may be far more useful to 
try to find the birth of subjects and objects in the development of a 
child rather than in history.

Here Pirsig describes the evolution of the child to explain dynamic and 
static quality:



"When this reality of value is divided into static and Dynamic

areas a lot can be explained about that baby's growth that is not well

explained otherwise.

One can imagine how an infant in the womb acquires awareness of simple

distinctions such as pressure and sound, and then at birth acquires more

complex ones of light and warmth and hunger. We know these distinctions

are pressure and sound and light and warmth and hunger and so on but the

baby doesn't. We could call them stimuli but the baby doesn't identify

them as that. From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not 
what,

compels attention. This generalized "something," Whitehead's "dim

apprehension," is Dynamic Quality. When he is a few months old the baby

studies his hand or a rattle, not knowing it is a hand or a rattle, with

the same sense of wonder and mystery and excitement created by the music

and heart attack in the previous examples.

If the baby ignores this force of Dynamic Quality it can be speculated 
that

he will become mentally retarded, but if he is normally attentive to

Dynamic Quality he will soon begin to notice differences and then

correlations between the differences and then repetitive patterns of the

correlations. But it is not until the baby is several months old that he

will begin to really understand enough about that enormously complex

correlation of sensations and boundaries and desires called an object 
to be

able to reach for one. This object will not be a primary experience. It

will be a complex pattern of static values derived from primary 
experience."


Once the baby has made a complex pattern of values called an object and

found this pattern to work well he quickly develops a skill and speed at

jumping through the chain of deductions that produced it, as though it 
were

a single jump. This is similar to the the way one drives a car. The 
first

time there is a very slow trial-and-error process of seeing what causes

what. But in a very short time it becomes so swift one doesn't even 
think

about it. The same is true of objects. One uses these complex patterns

the same way one shifts a car, without thinking about them. Only when 
the

shift doesn't work or an "object" turns out to be an illusion is one 
forced

to become aware of the deductive process. That is why we think of 
subjects

and objects as primary. We can't remember that period of our lives when

they were anything else.

In this way static patterns of value become the universe of 
distinguishable

things. Elementary static distinctions between such entities as "before"

and "after" and between "like" and "unlike" grow into enormously complex

patterns of knowledge that are transmitted from generation to 
generation as

the mythos, the culture in which we live."


Thoughts?

Regards,
Steve

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