[MD] Language

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,

> Steve said:
> I was talking about the issue of language as something that ought to be transcended--whether a pragmatist ought to agree or disagree with the mystic who says that the fundamental nature of reality is out side of language. ... Perhaps you could try reading it again and tell me where I get all SOM on you. I don't see how since I was criticizing the Pirsigian notion of getting outside language as being an SOM idea about language intervening between a subject and an object as he did in his lens metaphor: "The culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into these glasses.  If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or, God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird, if not actually crazy."
>
> I think he is using an SOM metaphor to attack SOM. What the heck could it mean to take the glasses off? Now he sees the world as it actually is instead of with SOM blinders? ...You are right that Rorty doesn't see any value in the notion of getting outside language. Nor do I, but I do recognize that Pirsig clearly does. I agree with Rorty, pace Pirsig, that the notion is incoherent once we drop the subject-object picture. While Pirsig sees the mystic as saying that the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language, Rorty is saying that that notion is incoherent unless you imagine reality in one hand, you on the other, and language as what James sarcastically called a tertium quid intermediate between the two. ...
>
>
> dmb says:

> First of all, please notice that the SOM glasses interpret experience, not the world as it actually is. The idea of the world as it actually exists IS the idea of an objective world and that is what's built right into the glasses. It is the interpretation, not reality before it's interpreted.

Steve:
It is a fair correction to my attack omn the glasses metaphor when you
say that what Pirsig is doing is not the same as the standard SOM lens
metaphor, but I still think the SOM glasses bit (and probably every
occular metaphor for knowledge) is just as problematic. You describe
what's going on as reality before it is interpreted on the one hand
and the interpretation on the other with the SOM lens as the tertium
quid intermediate between the two. I think it amounts to pretty much
the same thing as a lens intervening between a subject and an object.
We still have (1) a description and (2) what is being described as
well as some third thing standing in the way of making good
descriptions.

The following is better since it at least drops the third thing:

Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can
be described is a
process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the definitions emerge
they are static
patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say
correctly that Dynamic
Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because
definition never exhausts it. (RMP from LC)

Steve:
I think it is good that you hint at talking about experience as
interpretation and Pirsig in the above also does well to talk about
experience as a process of interpretation (or definition or
description). But when we are asked what it is that is being described
we should hear the sound of one hand clapping. Any answer would not be
the answer. The next best thing to not answerring at all would be to
just offer up some concept of conceptual emptiness (DQ) which Pirsig
would admit is just one more interpretation and the advice to unask
the question at best. Pirsig noted that from a mystic's perspective it
is a bad question--that it would be best to keep quiet--and then he
gives an answer anyway. By identifying his philosophy with mysticism,
he is stuck in this paradox. So why identify with mysticism? The
mystic reality is no better than the objective one as far as the
problem that the positing of a reality that is beyond description is
to offer a description of it as being beyond description. And at the
same time, it is not beyond description because it is the only thing
that is ever described. So Pirsig says that "one can say correctly
that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable." At
that point in one's understanding of the MOQ, isn't it better to say
nothing at all about DQ?


DMB:
As you've construed it, we take off those SOM glasses and find
ourselves looking at.... (wait for it, wait for it --- dramatic pause)
...the exact same thing we saw before we took off the glasses. I think
it's pretty clear that this would be absurd. The whole point of taking
off those glasses is to see things differently, of course, and that's
where the next point comes in.

Steve:
My view isn't that we take the glasses off and see exactly the same
thing. My views is that there ought not be three separate terms here.
Taking off the glasses ought to be an incoherent notion in Pirsig's
metaphor if here is no Cartesian subject to be wearing the glasses.
The subject is a collection of patterns of preferences and the glasses
then are part of that collection of patterns. A person doesn't take
them off and SEE something new. The person IS something new.

And this person taking off the glasses who has just rid herself of a
particular collection of patterns of preferences is not now free from
all patterns of preference. The person IS patterns of preferences. One
pattern of preferences gets replaced by another hopefully better one.
Removing all patterns of preferences (taking off all of our glasses)
would be to unpeal an onion to the point where there is no human being
left.


DMB:
> The trick to understanding the MOQ is in understanding what it actually means to claim that the fundamental reality is outside language.

Steve:
Why do you always take me to be not understanding when I am
disagreeing? I do understand the MOQ and I know Pirsig's philosophy
includes the notion that the fundamental reality is outside reality. I
am saying that Pirsig was wrong--that he would have done better to not
associate enlightenment with the notion of transcendence of language.

DMB:
The first thing to do is tell yourself that this fundamental reality
is NOT the objective reality, is NOT the world as it actually
is....The fundamental reality he's talking about is DQ or pure
experience. This is NOT a claim to have direct access to the world as
it actually is because, again, that just an idea that's derived from
experience, a conceptual interpretation of experience. The primary
empirical reality is just experience itself, not experience OF
things-in-themselves.

Steve:
Yep, I understand all that to be what Pirsig is saying. Now, how
exactly is it possible to be unenlightened in the sense of being out
of touch with reality if reality is experience itself? What in this
simple experience=reality picture needs to be transcended?

Since we can never be out of touch with reality, then our only
philosphical problem is a need for better descriptions. All
transcendence in terms of language can mean is to bring some new good
description into the world, and all that enlightenment can mean is the
state of having really good interpretations that can easily be dropped
when better ones become available.



DMB:
In the MOQ, there are no things-in-themselves because, again, that is
just one of the ideas built into the SOM glasses. Instead, the cutting
edge of experience is not so much "outside" language as it is "prior"
to the conceptualizations that quickly and habitually interpret it. In
this immediate flux of life there are as yet no differentiations. The
whole situation has a qualitative feel or an aesthetic charge, as in
the hot stove example. By the time you realize the situation in terms
of stoves and injured butts, you're looking at the situation through
conceptualizations. These two kinds of experience, conceptual and
pre-conceptual, work in tandem all day long whether we realize it or
not.

Steve:
So instead of outside/inside you are now preferring a distinction
between the past and the present. And the SOM glasses are part of the
present. Everything happens in the present--even refection on the
past. You say that "In this immediate flux of life there are as yet no
differentiations." Well then when do differentiations occur if not in
some later Now?  Nothing ever happens that doesn't happen in the
immediate flux of life.


DMB:
...The case of Jill Bolte Taylor makes a similar point from the
opposite direction. She was a brain scientist who has a stroke and
lost the use of her rational, verbal hemisphere and could only
experience reality as a whole, so much so
>  that she could not tell where she ended and the universe began. She now says that what she experienced was Nirvana and she cries tears of joy when she tells the story. We can think about this pure experience or undifferentiated experience in terms of the lack of distinction between subject and object but it is a lack of all distinctions. To fully realize this lack of division is to be enlightened. That's the fundamental reality that Pirsig is talking about. That's what the primary empirical reality is. Traditional empiricist and especially positivists would never touch this, not even with a ten-foot pole.

Steve:
I don't know what to make of these "tears of joy." You've sketched
enlightenment as a form of brain damage here. You talk of fully
realizing the lack of all distinctions as though that's how things
REALLY are and all dictinctions are illusion--that this primary
reality is what is really real. You know James studies this kind of
stuff in detail (if you've read Varieties) and never jumped to these
sorts of metaphysical conclusions.




> Steve said:
> ... Trying to compare language to something else that is outside of language is in this analogy an attempt to step out of your own skin. Why would anyone who has already dropped the correspondence notion even think of trying to do that?
>
>
> dmb says:
> The primary empirical reality is undifferentiated awareness, it's the reality you experience before you have a chance to think about it.


Steve:
You've just excluded thinking from emprical reality.

DMB:
...Anyway, I don't know who is trying to compare language to what's
outside language but the mystics and Pirsig will tell you that it
can't be done.

Steve:

Pirsig says it can't be done because language is not adequate to
representing reality. That is an SOM notion that ought to be
discarded. Language doesn't fail to represent reality when language
doesn't represent at all--when all we have are static patterns of
value and dynamic change.

We have interpretations (static patterns) and the ability to create
new and better descriptions (DQ). We can say what we ought to say
about language using such notions of static and dynamic quality
without positing some mystical realm or state that language keeps us
from accessing.

Best,
Steve