[MD] Concepts

[david buchanan]

Krimel said to dmb:You make this extraordinarily lame point that the narrator in ZMM is a literary devise. Perhaps but have you been reading Strauss or something. Like the book is code and sometimes it means what it says and sometimes it doesn't. Are we now to start looking for hidden messages and determining that for more than half of ZMM Pirsig is talking backward talk? 

dmb says:The explanation of the narrator as a literary device comes from the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of ZAMM, which was written by Pirsig. He corrects two errors there. One is that "Phaedrus" doesn't mean "wolf". It means "brilliant" or "radiant". "The second error is much more serious because it has obscured the fundamental meaning of the book."

"The narrator is primarily a person dominated by social values. As he says at the beginning, 'I haven't really had a new idea in years'. He never tells the story except in ways that are calculated to make you like him. His private thoughts he will share with you, but not with John or Sylvia or Chris or the DeWeeses. Above all, he does not want to be isolated from you - the reader- or from society around him. He maintains a careful position within the normal boundaries of his surrounding society because he has see what has happened to Phaedrus who did not. He has learned his lesson. No more shock treatment for him. Only at one pint does the narrator confess his secret: that he is a heretic who is congratulated by everyone for having saved his soul but who knows secretly that all he has saved is his skin.In Phaedrus's view the narrator is a sell out, a coward, who has abandoned truth for popularity and social acceptance by his psychiatrists, his family, his employers, and his social acquaintances. He sees that the narrator doesn't want to be honest anymore, just an accepted member of the community, bowing and accommodating his way through the rest of his years. Phaedrus was dominated by intellectual values. He didn't give a danm who liked or didn't like him. He was single-mindedly pursuing a truth he felt was of staggering importance to the world..." 
You call a "lame point". The author says this point has an important impact on "the fundamental meaning of the book". Despite your haughty, mocking tones, you could hardly be more mistaken. C'mon Krimel, if there's one thing I know how to do it's locate textual evidence for the assertions I make. And your condemnation of the so called "romantics" only has the effect of underscoring your own squareness, your own inability to interpret Pirsig's art as art.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Krimel said:My point has always been that it is harder for romantics to get with the program because their objections to classic thinking are aesthetic. You, gav Platt and Marsha are great examples of this. Not only are your objections to the classical view purely aesthetic, they make the use of reason futile.
dmb says:Actually, Platt is a good example of what happens when the narrator's cliched sentiments are mistaken for the truths of the MOQ. At this point I'll remind you that the narrator was a classical thinker and an Aristotelian while Phaedrus was the romantic, the Platonic Buddha seeker. As you can see from Pirsig's explanation for the intro, the romantic character is the intellectual. He's the one who wants to reform rationality itself, to expand rationality beyond amoral scientific objectivity. He's not some wishy-washy artsy-fartsy dreamer. He's such a hyper-intellectual that he wants to perform a philosophical revolution on the whole meaning of truth and intellect. Part of that reconstruction process involved an infusion of feeling, affect, intuition or whatever you want to call it but to suggest that this romantic perspective is "purely aesthetic" or that it makes "the use of reason futile" only demonstrates your own fundamental misunderstanding of the book. 

Krimel said: 
For example you say this, "Human perception is reduced to transduced energy. It's all about functioning parts." That is almost what I said and almost my actual position but what is missing is critical. If you have been paying attention you would notice that I have insisted all along that "sensation" is transduction or encoding of physical energy into neural impulses. Perception is the synthesis of the parallel process of sensation and memory. Awareness and perception are properties that emerge from the parallel processes that give rise to them. This is in fact what William James claims.

dmb says:Okay, you can consider the distinction between sensation and perception to be fully acknowledged. Perception synthesizes the sensations and so the latter is where energy transduction takes place. Now, if you would, please explain how this is relevant to the charge of reductionism? Are you STILL explaining human consciousness in terms of physiological processes and the distinction between sensation and perception does not alter that fact. Not eve a little bit. Regardless of the details, you are explaining a highly complex non-physical phenomenon in terms of biological structures and processes. That what reductionism means. It explains higher complex things in terms of the lower, simpler things from which they emerged. Objecting to this kind of reduction is not a denial that such structures and processes exist and the anti-reductionistic does not claim they are unworthy of study. It simply says that the higher more complex realities are qualitatively different such that they cannot be properly explained or understood in reductionist terms. It simply says that intellect is NOT a feature of biology. Consciousness is more than what brains do or what brains secrete, as you and your friend Searle put it. This is what the levels of the MOQ are about, preventing reductionist explanations, preventing the flatten of reality into one kind of thing; substance.

Krimel said: 
What exactly do you think "pre-intellectual" means? Is this a state you think would be desirable? Would it be desirable to be in this state all the time or is this a sort of conscious vacation spot where one drops in for the occasional quickie?


dmb says:
I explained what "pre-intellectual" means earlier today in a post to John that was also directed at you. As Pirsig says in connection with the hot stove example, "the purpose of mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from experience but to bring one's self closer to it by eliminating stale, confusing, static, intellectual attachments of the past". Do you think that would be desirable, to bring yourself closer to experience? In the MOQ experience is reality and the idea here is to bring yourself close to that, which means your characterization of it as a "conscious vacation" is approximately the opposite of what Pirsig is saying. 


Sorry, but I think you're off. Way, way off.



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