[MD] Capitalism: my experience

[plattholden at gmail.com]

Hi Ham,
See comments below


On 3 Mar 2010 at 1:25, Ham Priday wrote:

On 2 Mar 2010 at 6:20 PM, Platt responded to Ham who wrote:

>> You say "Direct experience occurs prior to division of S/O."
>> But if there is no Subject, there can be no Self to have experience.
>> Does it make sense that there can be experience, "direct" or
>> otherwise, without a subject?

[Platt]:
> Yes it make sense when you see that named objects and divisions
> like "Self" and "Subject" are not part of direct experience but are
> conjured up afterwards. A baby enjoys direct experiences but has
> no concept of self, subject or object. Please review Chapter 9 of
> Lila for a complete explanation.

A baby may not have a "concept" of self, which is an intellectual 
construct, 
but it is nonetheless an experiencing self (i.e., proprietary 
value-sensibility) by the time it is born into the world.

I dislike quoting Pirsig to support my arguments, but you leave me no 
choice.  Following are Phaedrus's statements that reveal how the MoQ 
was 
"designed" to overcome metaphysical objections. These quotes also 
show why 
the author had to develop the paradigm I'm challenging as a contrivance 
to 
make his thesis work.

"Sooner or later he was going to have to come up with a way of dividing 
Quality that was better than subjects and objects."

"A subject-object metaphysics is in fact a metaphysics in whjich the first 
division of Quality - the first slice of undivided experience - is into 
subjects and objects.  Once you have made that slice, all of human 
experience is supposed to fit into one of these two boxes. The trouble is, 
it doesn't.  What he had seen is that there is a metaphysical box that sits 
above these two boxes, Quality itself."

Now, do you suppose this top box of Quality was an intuitive insight on 
Pirsig's part?  No.  He had arbitraily chosen Quality as the leitmotif of 
his thesis, and he needed to posit this Quality outside the box to 
establish 
"a Catechism of Quality" by which he could refute the Rigels of the S/O 
world.  The "extra box" was an invention, and (I'm sorry but) the 
assertion 
that all of human experience doesn't fit into subjects and objects was a 
self-serving deception on the author's part.  All experience is an S/O 
relation.


Platt
Seems to me, Ham, that your assertion of an absolute (last sentence 
above) qualifies as "arbitrarily chosen as the leitmotif of [your] thesis."  


> Pirsig makes it clear that the experience comes prior to
> differentiations of "being." Please review Chapter 5 of Lila
> for a complete explanation.

"The statement that values are vague and therefore shouldn't be used 
for 
primary classification is not true.  There's nothing vague about a value 
judgment. ...It was this conclusion that placed him right in the middle of 
the field of philosophy known as metaphysics. ...Metaphysics was an 
area of 
study that had interested him more than any other as an undergraduate 
student in the United States and later as a graduate student in India. 
...He 
had finally landed in his own briar patch."

"The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called 
'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality 
doesn't have to be defined.  You understand it without definition, ahead 
of 
definition.  Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to 
intellectual abstractions."    --Lila, chpt. 5

Do you not see the strategy here?  Quality was Pirsig's grand theme.  In 
order to market this non-entity to both objectivists and mystics, he had 
to 
posit it out of the bounds of definition and intellection.  Quality thus 
became a mystical concept of its own, a primary source beyond 
description. 
It was the author's non-theistic God.


Platt
Seems to me your "Essence" also qualifies as a "primary source beyond 
description," your own "non-theistic God."


Still, Quality had to relate to Experience, and that was the "briar patch" 
Phaedrus had landed on.  He resolved the paradox by positing Quality 
as the 
'first cause' -- as  independent of and prior to everything else, including 
experience.  The single thorn remaining in this scheme, and IMO its 
Achilles 
Heel, is that it defies epistemology.  Quality (Value) is perceptual, which 
means that it cannot precede sensible experience but must be 
contiguous with 
it.


Platt
Quality is not "independent of and prior to everything else, including 
experience." It is experience, or if you prefer, "contiguous with it." If you 
must search for a "first cause" (which only leads to infinite regress) 
consider it to be experience, or as some prefer, "consciousness.".  


By the way, Platt, I would never call you a "liar".  What I said was that 
the distinction between "common experience and "direct experience" 
was a 
deception, and the Sir Walter Scott quote was directed at MoQ's author 
whose 
worldview you appear to have succumbed to.


Platt
Thanks for the correction. I thought the quote was from Shakespear's 
"Othello." And I thought the quote was directed at me. Now I know 
better. (Note: "betterness" is Pirsig's's theme:-) 


But I don't hold this against you, because conversing with you is always 
a 
pleasure.


Platt
Likewise. But don't you think we've about exhausted our efforts in trying 
to convince one another of our respective positions? We both seem to 
reached the stance of, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

Best regards,
Platt