[MD] still going?

[Dan Glover]

Hi Dave,

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 5:59 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dan said:
>
> As per the final paragraph... how can knowledge be objective? What I
> see the author doing here is taking the subject and object as literal
> entities existing independently forever apart. The trip-up occurs when
> subject and object touch (in a metaphoricalish philosophical sense of
> course since if subject and object are simply terms denoting a
> worldview they [as independent entities] can never touch) and the
> known becomes the knower, or the object becomes the subject.
>
> This seems to nullify the argument. But if you (or anyone) have a few
> minutes to spare and fancy a chat, please let me know what you think.
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Hmmm. I don't think the author of The Guidebook to ZMM is taking subjects and objects literally. He's explaining how ancient and modern philosophers treated them - and that could be described as "literally". But what's more interesting, I think, is the difference between the ancients and the moderns. This difference helps us understand what Pirsig was doing, which was neither ancient (Aristotle) nor modern (Kant) but more like Nietzsche's view.

Dan:
Yes I agree this point is most interesting.

>dmb:
> Just as "the Tao, the unnameable One, gives rise to the myriad nameable things by way of the Two, yin and yang," so it is with "Quality, the unnameable One, [which] gives rise to the myriad nameable things by way of the Two, subject and object. Quality is neither subject nor object but is the ground of both and permeates both". I think yin and yang, like subject and object, are secondary creations and are among the nameable things, so this differs from the claim that subject and object are primary, differs from the claim that they are literally the starting points of reality.
>
> DiSanto thinks there "is a genuine parallel" between the yin-yang polarity and the subject-object polarity but I'm not so sure. I'd only go so far as to say it's an interesting idea that's worth thinking about. And it does help us make sense of the difference between the ancients and the moderns. The ancient tendency to think of knowing primarily as a kind of receptivity meant that the active, shaping role of the knower was largely unnoticed. But after Kant it changed so that the subjective mind imposes its thought categories and thereby takes an active role in shaping the world as we know it.

Dan:
If we take the term Tao then I think we're talking about that which
cannot be grasped intellectually, the underlying order of all, which
is perhaps why Robert Pirsig likened it to Quality. On the other hand,
taking the term Tao as that giving rise to all things, now we're into
that which can be grasped and defined intellectually. I think it is
important to recognize the different usages of the term.

>dmb:
> But the MOQish answer comes just one page after the parts you quoted; on page 117 of the Guidebook to ZMM:
>
> "...the question arose, Why do human beings impose categories upon things in the process of knowing them? Nietzsche's answer, which has resonated throughout the 20th century, was that human beings are not really interested in knowing things but in making them amenable to their own desires and needs. Underlying and permeating the human desire to know is a 'will to power,' a drive toward self-expansion and self-assertion. With knowing thus reduced to willing, it became easier and easier to talk about human beings, in their knowing activity, as not just shaping but even creating their world. Phaedrus, for example, said that we 'create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it'."

Dan:

But is this really a MOQish answer to the: why? Isn't more a matter of
saying it simply is? That we create the world in which we live? That
isn't saying why we do it. And as far as Nietzsche's will to power,
I'm unconvinced that what he was on about, writing of, (Nietzsche),
was the need to know based upon self-expansion and self-assertion. If
one were to say expansion and assertion leaving out the qualifier self
then perhaps we might hit closer to the mark. Perhaps.

I'm thinking how in the MOQ there are different kinds of knowing
dependent upon the context. By subsuming subject and object to value
patterns arising in contradistinction to one another we might see how
Nietzsche's will to power refers perhaps to social patterns vs
intellectual, old vs new, in other words. But that path still lacks
any sort of answer to the why... why we as humans impose categories
upon things, unless...

Let's throw out the term things and replace it with patterns. Why do
human beings impose categories upon patterns? See. We've already
intellectually isolated the patterns. The categorization comes as a
sort of after-thought, a way of organizing that which we know. A
sorting. Parsing. It's sort of like building a library of books and/or
music. In the beginning there is no real need. To organize. But as the
collection grows it becomes apparent some kind of categorization is
needed in order to find our little treasures. But why?

>dmb:
>
> Like Phaedrus and Nietzsche, the Pragmatists also insist that we create reality according to human needs and practices.

Dan:
We create reality to survive. The rest comes later. I just read an
interesting article on why the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI)
has come up empty so far. According to the authors, odds are
extinction events tend to wipe out life before it has a chance to
evolve into intelligence. Me, I am of the opinion that life finds a
way. In that, I think we come closer to answering the why we impose
categories. To survive.

dmb:
> The mistake of idealist and materialist alike, John Dewey said, is that they confer existential status to the products of our reflection. In other words, the subjectivists and the objectivists both make the mistake of treating our creations as if they were literally real. But Pirsig and the Pragmatists are saying that subjects and objects are among those products of reflection, are among the things we've created. In the MOQ we'd call them intellectual static patterns, which are derived from Quality.

Dan:
Sounds good. Thanks Dave.

Dan

http://www.danglover.com