[MD] Consciousness & Moq.

[David Thomas]

The idea for this thread started with my question here:

> [Dave in Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy]
>DMB,

> As sarcastic and mean-spirited as we both can be, I have a real question for
> you? And don't take this the wrong way. Since you are one of keepers of the
> semi-official party line translation of Pirsig's work, "What about
> consciousness?"  I'm just starting David Chalmers, "The Conscious Mind".
> A brief word search of both of RMP's works seems to indicate that he takes
> it a given and with his resolution of the mind/body problem he solves "the
> problem of consciousness" Even though I'm only 4 pages into the book I can
> tell that Chalmers would disagree, immediately and vigorously, that RMP's
> approach just sweeps it under the rug.
> 
> Think on it and later on maybe we can try to discuss it semi-civically in a
> separate thread.
> 
> Dave

And then in what has to be some weird yet undiagnosed Freudian suppression
of past sexual abuses David Buchanan is unable to now talk directly to me
but channels Steve:

> Steve said to dmb:
> ... I have a real question for you?  "What about consciousness?"  ... "the
> problem of consciousness" ... RMP's approach just sweeps it under the rug.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> Not sure you've asked an actual question here. What is the problem of
> consciousness, exactly? What's being swept under the rug by RMP's approach?
> 
> But let me remind you that James' Essays in Radical Empiricism basically
> consists of two central essays and all the rest are expansions and
> qualifications of those two main essays. One of them is titled "Does
> Consciousness Exist?" and in it James answers "no", not if you mean a thing,
> an entity that has the thoughts. There is no Cartesian self, no mental
> substance. And then you see how subjects and objects are demoted from primary
> ontological categories to secondary concepts at the end of chapter 29 in Lila.
> As you're reading Chalmers ask yourself if he's operating with the
> subject-object metaphysical assumptions. Do you think you could spot such a
> thing? It'll probably mean reading between the lines just because assumptions
> are like that. They tend to go without saying. If anyone is likely to be
> explicit about such a thing, it'll be a philosopher. But still.
> 
> By the time James was all pumped up about radical empiricism in 1904 and 1905,
> a period of explosive creativity for James, he was also very excited about a
> philosophical wild man named Gustav Fechner. (Krimel is gonna love this.) An
> idea of his that James found very appealing was "the view that the entire
> material universe, instead of being dead, is inwardly alive and consciously
> animated ..in diverse spans and wavelengths, inclusions and envelopments".
> This isn't too far from the MOQish notion that the laws of physics are better
> conceived as patterns of preference. Even the physical is inwardly alive and
> consciously animated to some extent. The "its" count as one of the spans and
> wavelengths in this living universe. As James himself put it, "..it is easy to
> believe that consciousness or inner experience never originated, or developed,
> out of the unconscious, but that it and the physical universe are co-eternal
> aspects of one self-same reality, much as concave and convex are
>  aspects of one curve."
> 
> You see what these guys are saying?
> 
> If you're a scientific materialist and you hear James explain that
> consciousness as an entity, as a Cartesian self, does not exists, you're
> likely to take James as being somewhere in the brain-mind identity camp. You'd
> think there is no such thing as consciousness per se because the mind is just
> what the brain does, more or less. Most people in this camp will back off just
> a bit and make some qualification, but that's the basic idea. But when you
> read this Fechner-inspired stuff you realize that James had a whole different
> deal in mind. Instead of thinking that the mental is a product of the
> physiological, which is a product of the physical, you see that it's more like
> the physical and the mental have grown up and evolved together as two aspects
> of the One. In fact, James's biographer, Robert Richardson, says the quote
> above is the best statement about the many and the One that James ever
> produced (page 447).
> 
> Now think about that pithy little radically empirical slogan. Experience and
> reality amount to the same thing.
> 
> Hmmmm. Consciousness. Maybe I'll give it some thought.
> 
> What was the question? Can you state it very specifically?

Which then jumps to this:

> [Krimel]
> Thanks for this grab bag of illustrations.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #1: The one size fits all explanation...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [Steve asks dmb a question
> ... I have a real question for you?  "What about consciousness?"  ... "the
> problem of consciousness" ... RMP's approach just sweeps it under the rug.
> 
> [dmb responds:]
> Not sure you've asked an actual question here. What is the problem of
> consciousness, exactly? What's being swept under the rug by RMP's approach?
> 
> But let me remind you that James' Essays in Radical Empiricism...
> 
> [Krimel]
> There it is. The answer to every question. The wielding of the only tool in
> Dave's tool box.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #2: The steel trap mind slamming shut...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> As you're reading Chalmers ask yourself if he's operating with the
> subject-object metaphysical assumptions. Do you think you could spot such a
> thing? It'll probably mean reading between the lines just because
> assumptions are like that. They tend to go without saying. If anyone is
> likely to be explicit about such a thing, it'll be a philosopher. But still.
> 
> 
> [Krimel]
> It is hard to see how anyone interested in the idea of consciousness could
> ignore or dismiss Chalmers but for dmb it's not a problem. Rather than
> engage the issues raise he slaps on the label: SOM and "Presto" no need to
> read, no need to engage the issue, time to just sit back and feel self
> righteous.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #3: Appeal to authorities then embarrass them...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> By the time James was all pumped up about radical empiricism in 1904 and
> 1905, a period of explosive creativity for James, he was also very excited
> about a philosophical wild man named Gustav Fechner.
> 
> [Krimel]
> Here we see dmb's sense of history mangled. James talks extensively about
> Fechner in his Principles of Psychology because Fechner was among the first
> and best at trying to quantify the senses. James got "all pumped up" to
> write and introduction to Fechner's pamphlet "The Little Book of Life After
> Death" originally published in 1836 under a pseudonym. I think it would be
> difficult to find thinkers from the 19th century able to divorce themselves
> from animistic, spiritualist thinking. Surely at a century and a half's
> remove we ought to be able to forgive them. But dmb instead prefers to cite
> them as justification for a continuing adherence to these quaint
> misconceptions.  
> 
> Holding Fechner and James up as giving authority to animism and spiritualism
> does them both a disservice. It assumes that those positions are unaffected
> by a century of research and discourse. More knowledge of the physiology,
> cause and effects, and abstract metaphysical thinking on and about the brain
> and consciousness have take place in the past 25 years that in the whole
> span of history leading up to Fechner and James' time. It insults them both
> to think that their idea are unaffected by this progress.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #4: Letting the bathwater leak in through the backdoor...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> This isn't too far from the MOQish notion that the laws of physics are
> better conceived as patterns of preference. Even the physical is inwardly
> alive and consciously animated to some extent. The "its" count as one of the
> spans and wavelengths in this living universe.
> 
> [Krimel]
> Rather than altering our notions of "preference" to include a probabilistic
> view of causality; dmb sees Pirsig retreating into this kind of spiritual
> animism. 
> 
> It has is an ongoing mystery how one can make a claim for a universe that is
> "...inwardly alive and consciously animated" and yet deny that one's
> position is not supernatural, even theistic. I'm not even sure that stuff
> qualities as bathwater. After you stuff a towel under the back drop why
> don't you try shaking the handle?
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #5: The bumper sticker grab bag...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> You see what these guys are saying?
> 
> If you're a scientific materialist and you hear James explain that
> consciousness as an entity, as a Cartesian self, does not exists, you're
> likely to take James as being somewhere in the brain-mind identity camp.
> 
> [Krimel]
> No need to engage a different point of view when you can cover your lack of
> breadth and depth with slogans and strawmen. Since dmb engagement with
> intellectual activity is stunted in the 19th century, the materialist
> strawman is a Newtonian projection. Although it went up in flames at least
> by the middle of the 20th century it lives for dmb as a kind of fantasy
> whipping boy.
> 
> Note also the second example of the bumper sticker approach: "brain-mind
> identity camp" as though in this label we find a clearly defined group of
> the slack jawed, oblivious to dmb's keen and exhaustive insights.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustation #6: Spinning to blur distinctions...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> You'd think there is no such thing as consciousness per se because the mind
> is just what the brain does, more or less. Most people in this camp will
> back off just a bit and make some qualification, but that's the basic idea.
> But when you read this Fechner-inspired stuff you realize that James had a
> whole different deal in mind. Instead of thinking that the mental is a
> product of the physiological, which is a product of the physical, you see
> that it's more like the physical and the mental have grown up and evolved
> together as two aspects of the One. In fact, James's biographer, Robert
> Richardson, says the quote above is the best statement about the many and
> the One that James ever produced (page 447).
> 
> [Krimel]
> Here again we see the strawmen but some are willing to "back off" if "just a
> bit" no doubt intimidated by the imagined power of dmb's keen observations.
> Unfortunately dmb offers no actual attack on this position just a
> perfunctory dismissal and retreat into the 19th century. After all, if one
> were to venture into the 21st century it would be really hard to muster
> enough strawmen on this subject to matter.
> 
> "The mind is what the brain does..." of course it is and mostly"more" rather
> than "less". The "mind," whatever that is supposed to be, is the outcome of
> the process of the nervous system's engagement with the environment. It
> takes the sensory input Fechner so painstaking detailed and converts it into
> thought and action. If "consciousness" is a process then the brain is the
> processor. It is the dismissal of this notion that demands some kind of
> sustained defense in the 21st century.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration # 1 redeux: The short form...
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> Now think about that pithy little radically empirical slogan. Experience and
> reality amount to the same thing.
> 
> [Krimel]
> Bullshit lite: Less tedium but still impossible to swallow.
> 
> It might actually be meaningful to say "Experience and one's conception of
> reality amount to the same thing."
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Illustration #7: The clever signoff or "The Illusion of Cool..."
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [dmb]
> Hmmmm. Consciousness. Maybe I'll give it some thought.
> 
> What was the question? Can you state it very specifically?
> 
> [Krimel]
> I picture him saying this while polishing his Foster Grant wraparounds
> simultaneously grinding a Marlboro filter beneath his Chuck Taylors;
> Bohemian ironic affections trapping him in the amber of the 50s. Refusing
> the new millennium and feeling really good about it after all color TV is
> just a fad.
> 
> Thanks Dave, a truly enlightening post.
> 
I hope you're not thanking me. I just here in the middle wondering what the
hell just happened.

I just asked a very simple question of DMB, "What about consciousness?"

Which of course is an insult to "philosophers" who like everything spelled
out in precise sentences so that they can avoid the question by attacking
its lack of logical coherence, syntax, grammar, misspelling, anything but
address the issue. Or maybe the author I mentioned was on his university's
banned books list and he didn't want to be burned at the stake, I don't
know.

In his two fictional biographies, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance" and "Lila" author Robert M Pirsig tries to develop a
metaphysical system based on Quality. This attempt takes its final form in
Lila and where Pirsig calls it " The Metaphysics of Quality."

Based on what Pirsig calls "MoQ", What commentary, analysis, or conclusions
does he make about "consciousness" or "conscious experience"?  Is he right?
How do you know?

I specialize in unconsciousness and have no idea what the other might be so
have at it.

Dave