From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 07 2005 - 19:28:22 GMT
Hi Anthony,
An overdue response to your Neapolitan ice cream ;-)
> Ant McWatt states: (Friday, February 18, 2005 2:18 PM)
>
> Sam's essay on MOQ.org isn't an argument. Instead of concluding that the
> MOQ is a form of Kantian SOM, he might as well as have concluded that the
> MOQ is a form of Neapolitan ice cream. Like melting ice cream Sam's essay
> has some nice elements in it but it has no real substance. (A note for
> Sam - the essay you sent to me privately is a lot better even if it
> doesn't directly relate to the MOQ).
I think Matt characterised the essay accurately when he called it a
"prolegomena to a future critique" and a "suggestive genealogy". In other
words, it's very rough and ready and was intended to raise questions and be
a pointer. It was precisely not intended to end all discussion. As I put it
right at the end of the essay "I don't have positive answers to put forward
to the various questions that this raises, but I felt it would be worth
sharing the questions." The essay I sent to you and Paul off-list
(previously sent to DMB) was one submitted for my MA, so there's no
comparison. (Like the difference between a column in the Guardian and an
article in an academic journal). Anyhow, that's all by the by - although I
was delighted to discover that someone else (in the article in that
theological journal) had thought the same thing I had.
Two things, one minor, one major.
1. It's not that the MoQ is a form of Kantian SOM, it's that it has a shape
which bears a remarkable resemblance to the shape of Schleiermacher's
philosophy (which then descended to James (and to Northrop?) before reaching
Pirsig). In other words, there was a reaction AGAINST Kant, giving rise to a
particular pattern of thinking, and the MoQ seems to share major elements
with that pattern. So the Kantian problematic is that there is no room for
God (value) and Schleiermacher was attempting to argue for a way of
understanding God (value) that would withstand the critique, and used the
language of an experience preceding the division into subjective/objective
etc. I think Pirsig is doing the same, and his language of people not being
able to deny the existence of Quality seems to fit in with that
'problematic' quite exactly.
2. More importantly, I would be very interested to read a proper analysis
from you of why that argument fails. Obviously to make it properly academic
and respectable I would need to provide much more in the way of
argumentation. But what the last part of the essay was sketching out was
some of the ways in which the academic community (at least, the bits I've
been exposed to) think about this whole issue of 'experience', especially as
it relates to religious experience (or 'pure experience' - which I think you
accept as an equivalent term for DQ). In particular, what do you make of
this point from Nicholas Lash (which I quoted before):
"However hostile to Cartesian dualism [[SOM]] we suppose ourselves to be, it
is not possible to escape its clutches while continuing to treat the
distinction between mind and matter as empirical, as being (that is to say)
a distinction between two different kinds of 'thing' or substance...[in my
earlier book] I took William James as my conversation partner precisely
because I respected his influence, originality and power. If James, of all
people, could be shown to be still mesmerised by the Cartesian spell, then
the power of that bewitchment's grip would have been dramatically displayed.
I was, moreover, well aware of the fact that I was taking issue with what is
probably still the most widespread account in our culture of what is meant
by 'person' and 'experience', by 'religion' and by 'God'; an account
subscribed to by both the friends of religion and its foes. It therefore
seemed to me important (on, if you like, something like Popperian grounds)
to challenge this account, not in its casual and slipshod versions, but in
the strongest, most persuasive version that I knew... Whether or not I made
my case, where James' residual Cartesianism is concerned, is up to other
people to decide. But, if I did, the chances are that those who still
endorse more or less Jamesian accounts of what is meant by 'consciousness'
and by 'experience', by 'religion' and its 'objects', are still operating
within Cartesian parameters [[this is what I accuse Pirsig of doing]]......
Although Oxford may be among the last places to discover this, the
philosophical, psychological, sociological and now... biological criticisms
of empiricist construals of the grammar of 'experience' are, by now,
cumulatively so devastating as to require, at the very least, from those who
wish to keep such usages alive, *arguments* and not mere expressions of
preference. Finally, as I put it [in my earlier book] if there is now 'very
little to be said in favour of, and a great deal to be said against,
retaining a contracted account of experience *in general* [[ie the
inheritance from SOM]], then there is even less to be said in favour of
retaining a contracted account of *religious* experience."
(Nicholas Lash, "The beginning and end of 'religion'", 1996.)
Now, you deal with this in a section of your thesis (when you avoid some of
the more obvious problems), but you say "mental substances and material
substances can be perceived as ontologically identical i.e. as intellectual
quality patterns and inorganic quality patterns respectively." (p 168) My
question to you is: how does this avoid Lash's point? (ie that treating the
distinction between mind and matter as that between two types of substance
is still to be trapped in SOM; he's drawing a lot on Wittgenstein there, of
course).
I look forward to a full meal of a response, rather than a Neapolitan ice
cream!
Cheers
Sam
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