[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[Dan Glover]

John,

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 1:03 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
>> > Jc:  there is a logic to the fact that the only way to intellectually
>> > resist social pressure is individually.  If you just prefer the
>> > beliefs of one group as opposed to another, you're taking sides in a
>> > social conflict but you're not really thinking for yourself and the
>> > distinction between social patterns and intellectual ones would be
>> > meaningless.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Actually, social pressure seems to be a prime example of social
>> patterns of value, and as the Borg said so eloquently, resistance is
>> futile, especially on an individual basis. You'll end up either in
>> prison or an insane asylum unless you comport to the rules of whatever
>> culture you happen to live in.
>
> Jc:
>
> As RMP pointedly says:  "How can you tell the degenerates from the
> messiahs"?  I think that question illustrates the point that not ALL
> social deviation ends you up in an asylum.  Sometimes you end up
> founding a religion or writing a best-seller.

Dan:
In which case you're no longer considered a deviant. In ZMM the
narrator makes mention of recanting:

"What I am is a heretic who's recanted, and thereby in everyone's eyes
saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside
that all he has saved is his skin."

>JC:
> I think that looking at the levels as indiscrete, is more useful than
> looking at them as pristine.  In fact,  it seems obvious to me that
> every level above, is inclusive of all the levels below, but with
> something more, a new level of patterning.
>
> But... that new level in no way obviates or eliminates the lower
> patterns.  For instance, all social patterns are creations of
> biological human beings, and in a 1st level, material world (not that
> the whole world is material, but at least a large part of it is!)
> Thus understanding the way the levels work together, helps us in
> making better quality decisions about what to intellectually endorse.
>
> Now, it's hard to endorse, what you don't hear.  Thus most of the 4th
> level, is a sort of individuation of choice - the individual reacting
> to what she perceives as "the DQ move"  the move toward betterness.
> This puts the MoQ on solid ground with pragmatism and personalism
> both, and seems also, more importantly, "the most true to me".
>
> See?  I'm thinking about what seems better to ME.  And that "ME" is a
> social composite of all my past experience,  seeking a unity that is a
> kind of ultimate good - (as it seems to me)  Thus my person is not a
> unique or metaphysically significant entity - it is a mere mode of
> information that has been informed and selected by many sources,
> including you yourself.  So you are me and he is she and we are all
> together... right?
>
> But at the same time, there is that still small voice, which whispers
> whether any idea or concept or communication is good or is not good,
> and that occurs on an individual level, but gets resonance socially,
> or it fades and dies.
>
> As best as I can see and understand it, that is the way the MoQ levels
> help me to understand (codify) my experience.

Dan:
My problem with this is that it seems to allow everyone to codify the
MOQ on their own terms thus nullifying any real meaning to the
framework it offers us. I don't see that I'm being dogmatic when I
point out certain nuances of the MOQ. Rather, my goal is to help
better elucidate what Robert Pirsig is saying and not my
interpretation of it, though to a certain extent we all filter
everything we know through our cultural lens.

>
>
>>
>> Dan:
>> Changes are occurring more quickly than most anyone realizes. My
>> youngest grandchild was born seven months ago.
>
> Jc:  Blessings.  I'm still waiting for my first.  Things are looking
> up tho.  My oldest is in her first serious relationship and it keeps
> getting more serious.  This guy may be around for a while.  Overall, I
> like him.  Independent means, getting his art degree.  He really likes
> my daughter and they seem to have a lot in common.

Dan:
That's wonderful. It's quite something to watch a family evolve over the years.

>
>
> Dan:
>
>
>>By the time she reaches
>> adulthood, it will be illegal for a human being to drive a car on
>> public roads. The odds are our descendents will look back on the
>> carnage caused by automobile accidents and shudder just as we do when
>> we look back with horror on the medicinal practices of the 17th and
>> 18th centuries.
>>
>
> Jc:  A bit of of conjecture on your part.  The way we are headed, it
> might be that by the time she reaches adulthood, we'll be back to the
> horse and buggy era.  A change which I won't bemoan, if it happens.
> Very few people have been killed by drunk horseback riders.

Dan:
Actually no, it isn't conjecture on my part at all. Self driving cars,
buses, semi-trucks, and even jet planes are just around the corner.
But really my point was how hard it is to foresee such radical changes
before they happen.

>
>JC:
> But really Dan, the way we are living can not continue on into the
> future much longer.  Radical changes are going to take place - whether
> by accident and disaster or planning and forethought, is the question.
> But projection from now is a tricky biz.

Dan:
Researchers just completed a study of some 100,000 galaxies searching
for tell-tale signs of advanced civilizations that have moved to the
point of being able to engineer their galaxy to suit their own
purposes. Nothing was found. So. Either there are no such advanced
civilizations out there, or if they are, theirs is a culture not bent
upon subjugating their environment. Which is it? I vote the latter.

>
>
>
> Dan:
>
>> What I find interesting in that is how all our science fiction of
>> today has human beings piloting spacecraft. The idea of the individual
>> being in control is so ingrained into our culture that it is nearly
>> impossible to comprehend the enormity of change that is coming our way
>> and quickly. Will people fight it? Absolutely. But just as we
>> eventually gave into the notion that the earth is not the center of
>> the universe, so too will we come to see neither is the individual.
>
> Jc:
>
> Ingrained in our culture.  There is a strong inertia to the powers of
> the status quo.  No question.  They must topple of their own
> imbalances.  I guess the only question is to gauge which way they are
> leaning and get out of the way.
>
> Unfortunately, the nations seem to be leaning towards conflict and war
> - the old ways.  Which don't work with technological advances of today
> because they "work" too well.  Unfortunate unleashing of a certain
> brand of "pragmatic thinking".  It's like an excellent intellectual
> tool, handed over to an evil overlord.  Oops.

Dan:
I guess I hold out hope. Take the recent reconciliations of the United
States with Cuba as well as the treaty just worked out with Iran.
These seem promising steps away from war and conflict, something we
haven't seen much of over the past few decades.

>
>
>> Dan:
>> The MOQ states that idealism and materialism are both right in their
>> own limited perspectives.
>
>
> Jc:  That strikes me as a bit facile.  Idealism and materialism both
> vie for metaphysical dominance equally  and neither will allow the
> slightest bit of overlap.  If it's all information - then the
> idealists win.
>
> Of course, I don't see the MoQ as successfully negotiating any sort of
> bridge between the two. I see the MoQ as a species of Pragmatism -
> which is in fact, a neo-Kantian, non-Hegelian, Idealism!

Dan:
Well then, you're basically throwing out half the MOQ to suit your own purpose.

>JC:
> When you say the MoQ simply dodges the whole debate, it's kind of a
> code for RMP dodges the whole debate and that is true.  Pirsig never
> claimed to be a premium philosophologist.  He stuck to HIS path, and
> that was the right thing to do for him.  But that doesn't mean the
> effort to map his path comparitively with others and point out the
> various similarity of routes... is undermining his way.  I'm sure he'd
> agree.

Dan:
Maybe. But neither did I say we should abandon efforts to compare the
MOQ to other philosophies. My advice is to get the MOQ right first.

>
>
>
>
>> > Jc:  Yes.  Scott Adams make this point in his Native Pragmatism, how
>> > the Haudenosee had stories of inviting one's enemies - the cannibal -
>> > into camp and feeding him.  It gives a whole new meaning to the
>> > Thanksgiving story, eh?
>>
>> Dan:
>> Well, yes. On the other hand, shared cultural customs from around the
>> globe point to dining with one's enemies as a way of bridging the gap
>> between them, if only until the food digests. Feeding the beast keeps
>> it from eating you. I think Freud wrote quite a lot on that.
>
> Jc:  Hmmm.. so... primal, then.  That was the key, to the idea of the
> Indians - it wasn't anything particular about this tribe of humans, it
> was that they were primal - closer to the source and thus a
> "rectification" of conceptualizations - the ongoing work of intellect
> needs a source for its abstractions, no?  And these, the native
> people, were a source of authenticity for certain conceptions of self
> and world.
>
> And THAT was how Pragmatism was born!

Dan:
I'd say pragmatism (a set of intellectual patterns) was born of social
values. If that is what you're saying, then we agree.

>
> Fascinating.
>
>
>
>>
>> Dan:
>> Absolutes are set in stone. Experience is malleable. Absolutes are
>> hard and unforgiving. Experience is pliable and absorbs blows without
>> breaking. To set a foundation of absolutes cannot further thought,
>> only limit it.
>>
>
> Jc:  Here is what I mean:  "further thought" is a phrase I wish to
> focus upon, in my explanation, for what I mean by "absolute" (and what
> I believe Peirce and Royce meant by their terms) is the understanding
> of what underlies that "further thought".

Dan:
I would say culture underlies thought, further or otherwise.

>JC:
> "furthur thought", actually, because it evokes a hippy misspelling
> that an author approved and went into legend because of a book...

Dan:
I never looked at further as a misspelling. I always thought the term
represented exactly what the author wanted to state.

>JC:
> but anyway, further thought is a thing that means thought - thinking.
> Asking ourselves what lies at the basis of our thinking, is seeking
> the "absolute" limit.  It's a kind of game of definition that includes
> divination and there is nothing wrong with "absolute", except its got
> the same kind of problem that "metaphysics" has in Lila - it's a
> degeneracy.  But....
>
> And this is a very important but.
>
> As a self-avowed degeneracy, it accomplishes an irony that takes us to
> a higher plane of consciousness.  Isn't that cool?  That was kind of
> what thrilled me about the Royce conference and Tunstall and Auxier's
> thesi (thesis's?  Thesis'es?  no idea) of Royce's fictional ontology.
> Whatever you do, don't forget that we're basically just making stuff
> up and telling ourselves stories here.  You can't get outside of that.

Dan:
Well, yeah. That's pretty much what I do... what we all do. Only a few
of us are more blatant about it than others. But how does lying to
each other bring about a transition to a higher state of
consciousness?

>
>
>> > Jc:  Using a term like "absolute" is a tricky business.  As Pirsig
>> > pointed out in that quote I shared, it has many connotations and
>> > requires some work to come to an agreed-upon definition.   But I think
>> > the work is fruitful and resolving the conflicts brings new light to
>> > old problems.  Even good ol' William had his moments of realizing
>> > this.
>> >
>> > James: Not only the absolute is its own other, but the simplest bits
>> > of immediate experience are their own others, if that Hegelian phrase
>> > be once for all allowed. The concrete pulses of experience appear pent
>> > in by no such definite limits as our conceptual substitutes for them
>> > are confined by. They run into one another continuously and seem to
>> > interpenetrate.... My present field of consciousness is a centre
>> > surrounded by a fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious
>> > more. I use three separate terms here to describe this fact; but I
>> > might as well use three hundred, for the fact is all shades and no
>> > boundaries. Which part of it properly is in my consciousness, which
>> > out? If I name what is out, it already has come in. The centre works
>> > in one way while the margins work in another, and presently overpower
>> > the centre and are central themselves. What we conceptually identify
>> > ourselves with and say we are thinking of at any time is the centre;
>> > but our full self is the whole field, with all those indefinitely
>> > radiating subconscious possibilities of increase that we can only feel
>> > without conceiving, and can hardly begin to analyze."
>>
>> Dan:
>> I agree the term absolute has many connotations. I guess my question
>> is, why do you believe it is important to introduce the term into the
>> MOQ?
>
>
> Jc:
>
> The most basic reason is, because I got an emotional reaction, similar
> to when Phaedrus connected the proto-MoQ to the Tao, in my reading of
> Royce's struggles in the Grass Valley library that day back in 07,
> And the main thrust of the argumentation against Royce, that I've
> heard on this list is dmb's objection to the term "Absolute"
>
> But dmb is simply mirroring Jame's aversion to the term and thus it
> seems to me, an interesting topic of clarification - what is really
> meant by the term.  Auxier and Tunstall's acceptance of the idea of
> Royce's "fictional ontology" overthrows what is being assumed by dmd
> (and others I'm sure) in the meaning of the term but Pirsig himself
> only objected to the connotations of the term, and as any good
> logician knows, connotations are not for the serious.  They belong to
> the marketing dept, not the quality control logicians.
>
> Does that answer your question yet?  I could go on, I'm sure.  :)

Dan:
So you're saying because you get a rise out of dmb you continue to
push the idea of the absolute... is that right?

>
>
>>
>> Dan:
>> You seem to be assuming language is a collection of intellectual
>> patterns.
>
>
> Jc:  No... I think intellectual patterns are collections (patterns) of
> language.

Dan:
Ah. That's an interesting take on things. My objection would be that
often times I find I'm stuck on an idea (intellectual pattern) that
will further my writings (language). After a multitude of efforts at
breaking through the barrier, after exhausting myriad possibilities
yet finding no satisfactory answer, I give up.

I take a break. Maybe I'll go to my day job and perform some sort of
meaningless and menial manual labor. Maybe I'll take a run. Maybe I'll
sit in zazen for a while. All of a sudden, the solution appears,
seemingly out of nowhere. It isn't that I'm talking to myself... that
eternal internal dialogue that goes on inside my head. Rather, I've
quit talking to myself. In doing so, the ideas prowling around the
periphery of my consciousness have an opportunity to make themselves
known.

So no, I'd have to disagree with you. Language might be (in part)
composed of intellectual patterns, but intellectual patterns are not
to be equated with language.


>> >> JC:
>> >> > But
>> >> > Pirsig's MoQ makes it much clearer by explicating LEVELS of experience and
>> >> > it's only in the real of analytic intellect that any absolute has meaning
>> >> > or existence.  It's a conceptual abstraction that serves a function on the
>> >> > 4th level, that's all.
>> >>
>> >> Dan:
>> >> So any absolute is a high quality idea. Is that what you're saying?
>> >>
>> >
>> > Jc:   No, I'd say that the term itself can be used in quality ways -
>> > To construct rational systems.  Believing in one's own creation is the
>> > problematic area that science fights and common sense admonishes us to
>> > avoid.  There are big problems with absolutism.  I agree with James
>> > and so does Royce.
>> >
>> > "James remains painfully conscious of the rootlessness, loneliness,
>> > and fragmentation of modern life. He thinks the Absolute idealists'
>> > proffered cure for this is as bad as the disease: their attempt to
>> > show that the fragmentation of the sensuous and natural-scientific
>> > life is knit up in an Absolute Mind that subsumes all finite points of
>> > view and connects all things in its battery of universal ideas. For
>> > James this is a monstrous abstraction that conceals the wound it
>> > cannot heal."
>> >
>> > What James is fighting against is nothing less than intellectual
>> > arrogance which permeates the halls of power and academia.  A worthy
>> > fight!  Nevertheless, as Wilshire goes on to explain:
>> >
>> > "Nevertheless, James feels intensely the disease of alienation and
>> > world-loss, and our yearning, "our persistent inner turning toward
>> > divine companionship."" A hopeful remedy he finds in the panpsychic
>> > world vision of the German polymath, Gustav Fechner. If Absolute
>> > idealism is egregiously thin, Fechner's view is very very thick.
>> > Fechner writes of plant-souls, animal-souls, indeed, Earth-soul. Now
>> > what on earth are scientists like James and Fechner doing speaking
>> > this way? Because they are also philosophical, and they realize that
>> > stock scientific materialism cheats at the start: supposes that Earth
>> > and its members are discrete, inert, or mechanical bodies 'out there.'
>> >
>> > Such objectification emerges from, abstracts from, a primal
>> > involvement with things: a being-along-with-fellow-members of the
>> > earth, and it forgets its abstraction and what it abstracts from.
>> > James and Fechner will not forget. They develop a clue in
>> > Aristotle-and in much indigenous and aboriginal thought as well: human
>> > soul is not some nonmaterial entity or spiritual force, but is just
>> > all that the body does. The body not only eats, excretes, copulates,
>> > but it breathes as well, and this breathing is a bridging into the
>> > thinking and feeling that it also does. The Aristotelian formula is:
>> > Soul is to body as sight is to the eye. And there are bodies other
>> > than human ones; in fact, Earth itself is a body."
>> >
>> >  The more I read of these progenitors of pragmatism, the more I like
>> > and the more I agree that Pirsig is in the same philosophical boat.
>> > This connection with primal american thought at the basis of American
>> > Pragmatism has been very enlightening to me. Tying William James to WJ
>> > Siddis and thence RMP is a fascinating move.
>>
>> Dan:
>> I think what's being said in the quotes you offer would make much
>> better sense framed within the hierarchy of the MOQ.
>>
>
> Jc:  Dan!  You've become a dogmatist!  You sound just like people in
> church who argue against the points I make to them, " I think what's
> being said in the quotes you offer would make much
>  better sense framed within the hierarchy of the Bible."

Dan:
Take for example this sentence from the quote you offered:

"The body not only eats, excretes, copulates, but it breathes as well,
and this breathing is a bridging into the thinking and feeling that it
also does."

Doesn't the MOQ with its four levels offer a more expansive point of
view? For one thing, the author is completely disregarding cultural
influences. The jump is made directly from biological breathing to
thinking... to intellectualizing. This is of course the common way of
categorizing such things so I can't blame the author. But, and I say
it again, the MOQ offers us a better hierarchy in which to frame such
statements. I see nothing dogmatic about that.

>JC:
> But I do basically agree with you.  It's just that as I'm reading, I'm
> making an internal interpretation into the vocabulary of the MoQ and
> I'm swelling up with happiness - it fits!  It all fits.  This was
> Pirsig's reaction when he re-read James, in his more mature
> reflections and he saw how it all dove-tailed.

Dan:
To a point, yes. But if I'm not mistaken, Robert Pirsig was reading
James after he developed the MOQ. And I'm pretty sure he offered the
same advice that I did... that the writings of James would make more
sense seen through the lens of the MOQ.

>JC:
> That's because there is a certain "perennial-ness" to the Good.  It
> pops up, unexpectedly.  DQ is always a surprise.  Otherwise it'd be
> just good ole SQ.

Dan:
Everything we see and know is static quality. Even the surprise of
Dynamic Quality.

>
>
>
>
>> Dan:
>> Though religion can be seen as a collection of social patterns, that
>> doesn't mean social patterns are religion. Collections of people are
>> not social patterns in the MOQ. Collections of people are biological
>> patterns. They are physical. They can be seen. Social patterns are
>> non-physical. They cannot be seen. By conflating social patterns with
>> collections of people you are creating confusion.
>
>
> Jc:  I'd like to talk about the way people, actual people, move in
> relation to these levels and their influences.

Dan:
I thought that's what we were doing. However, to make that effort we
should first get it right... the MOQ, that is, and the relationships
of the levels.

> JC:
> There really isn't
> anything more to talk about, is there?  Abstract arguments are for
> abstract people, but we are real people and we talk about real things.
> The MoQ is Pragmatic, and Pragmatists love the concrete.

Dan:
Again, I wouldn't go so far as to say the MOQ is pragmatic. That is
doing it a disservice, in my opinion, of course. It's like
pigeonholing the MOQ into a convenient little nest and saying: There!
I'm got it all figured out! The MOQ is pragmatic, just like the
philosophy of William James and a thousand others.

I think the MOQ offers a more expansive point of view than pragmatism,
idealism, materialism, or any other ism you can name.

Thank you,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com

>
>
> Concretely yours,
>
> (I've got some thoughts to share with you on "Big Sur", later)

Hey... I'd love to hear them!