From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Nov 02 2005 - 20:28:09 GMT
Mike,
Mike said:
For the love of God, don't stop now! I thought you'd finally boiled it down
to the crux of your disagreement. Matt thinks that all experience can be
described in any terms, including scientific/physical terms. DMB disagrees
in one particular case, because he thinks that everything emanates from
pre-intellectual experience, so that to describe pre-intellectual experience
in terms of anything else is a "category mistake", as I think Scott called
it.
Matt:
Yeah, well, break offs will happen. We've been at this particular
conversation for a long time and it finally spun itself into a complete,
full circle. I didn't even notice entirely by how much until a week or so
ago. I think we may have finally found the crux of the issue between us,
but there are a couple reasons why the conversation should probably stop for
now. For one, I'm tired of writing it (and I imagine the same goes for
DMB). For two, since it has gone full circle, I don't have anything really
new to say. We've both been saying the same thing in slightly different
ways from the beginning and it did help to finally get in isolation some
particular thing that doesn't seem to be a verbal issue. Our disagreement
over pre-intellectual experience seems a crux exactly because out of it can
be spun every other surface disagreement. But it helps to have a break to
regroup one's thoughts and figure out a good way forward. For three, I'm
not sure there's really any way to argue about the difference we've found.
It seems to me to be an enabling assumption, one that allows us to build up
from there, and there isn't much we could argue about without begging the
crucial question. (I've written about this type of thing many times over
the years, something I think is typical of philosophical disagreements.
E.g., the "Confessions" post from July 2002 and the "Begging the Question"
posts from Oct 2003.)
For instance, I think characterizing DMB's charge against me as a "category
mistake" is exactly right. The problem I've been trying to raise about this
is that different vocabularies use different categories. A "category
mistake" is internal to a vocabulary. My claim is that a physicist's or
physiologist's vocabulary is different then the one the mystic uses.
Neither the physiologist who describes mystical experiences as nerve
quiverings nor the mystic who describes mystical experiences as becoming One
with Reality can claim the other is making a category mistake because each
is using a different set of categories. The only way of pressing that
claim, of a physiologist describing Oneness as neuron firings as making a
category mistake, is to claim that the vocabulary you are using is a
vocabulary that everyone _has_ to use (in other words, already uses whether
they know it or not).
This, in fact, is the claim that reductive materialists have claimed against
mystics when they accuse the philosophical mystic of making a category
mistake. I see DMB as turning it around. I, on the other hand, think both
sides should just drop the claim. But the arguments either DMB or I would
use against the other would be question-begging because we have too little
in common in this area. Take, for instance, how circular our conversation
became. We just go around and around. Not only that, but it ended where we
started. The last thing I said to DMB was:
"I think the most neutral terms of describing the disagreement we've found
might be something like this: we disagree on the nature of SOM, the impetus
that prompts Pirsig into formulating some alternative to it. The shape and
scope of this enemy is going to shape _our_ response to it, determine what
we take out of Pirsig, which is why you think one part of Pirsig fundamental
and I a different part. If there is a further direction to this
conversation, it'll have to be about what _we_ consider SOM to be (not
_just_ what Pirsig considers it, though obviously it'll travel through there
considerably), what we consider the impetus to philosophize to be, what
problems we consider ourselves to be solving."
I was only conscious of the fact that this is where we started after I wrote
that. In my first post, the only substanative thing I said was:
"While I still don't think 'blind spot' is a good term for describing the
differences between vocabularies, one way of getting at our differences is
through the Sophists, since we both want to appropriate them. If I'm
reading you right, you think of the Sophists as the last generation of
philosophical mystics before Plato (though more specifically Aristotle)
turned subsequent philosophy away from mysticism by focusing our attention
on dialectic-turn-logic-turn-science. My preferred description of the
Sophists is as the first generation of metaphysical skeptics, the first
generation of practical philosophers who attempted to turn us away from the
Parmenidean search for the Absolute Reality behind the Shifting Appearances
to focus on our day-to-day problems of living life excellently---before
Plato (though not specifically Aristotle) turned subsequent philosophy away
from the practice of life by focusing our attention on
dialectic-turn-logic-turn-theory."
It turns out, apparently, that I _was_ reading DMB right then, because the
difference between thinking the important movement of philosophy since the
Sophists is "dialectic-turn-logic-turn-science" as opposed to
"dialectic-turn-logic-turn-theory" accounts for the differences we're
seeing. As far as I can see, DMB thinks the enemy is reductive materialists
and I think the enemy is simply reductionists. DMB has pressed the "blind
spot" claim on me (as the surrogate for Western philosophy as a whole), but
the reason I said then that I don't think it helps is the same reason I
don't think pressing "category mistake" helps--it begs the question. I can
claim DMB has a blindspot or is making a category mistake just as easily as
he can. The reason is the vocabularies we are using are too different. The
problem with the "blind spot" epithet is that we _all_ have blindspots.
Having a blind spot is a function of using a vocabulary. If you're looking
forward, you're not looking backward. When you go to look behind you,
you're now not looking in front of you. A vocabulary is able to function
exactly because it means _this_ and not _that_; it constrains what you
"see."
But that's from my perspective. From DMB's perspective, there is a way to
eliminate blind spots--Dynamic Quality. That's the crux--the
pre-intellectual experience. Our arguments from those positions will keep
going around and around and I don't want to do that right now. We probably
will again (possibly after I write up my recent thoughts into a new essay),
but for right now I think I've milked about all the new ways of putting my
point that I can from this conversation.
Matt
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