Scott.
Somehow I did not see this post of yours before launching my latest.This is
even better! Finally someone who understands the innermost significance of
the Quality idea.
On 28 July you wrote
(to Gary)
> This seems to have become a 'tis/'taint argument, so let me try a
> different tack.
> In my opinion, you are denying the MOQ. Specifically, Pirsig adopts as
> the primary distinction that into DQ and sq. He then categorizes sq
> into four levels, inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual,
> each level developing out of the previous, thanks to DQ. Note that
> there is no division into internal and external reality. He then says
> that what we commonly call subjective can be identified as the social
> and intellectual levels, and objective the other two. Again, no
> division into internal and external reality. just a definition of two
> words. In traditional terms, no mind/matter division.
Exactly. If the S/O distinction goes as the fundamental divide, so does its
many offshoots: mind/matter, inner/outer, psychic/physical, mental/corporeal
...etc. The next problem is how to incorporate the VALUE of the S/O in the
MOQ and Pirsig does it the way you describe it, which I call the "weak"
interpretation while the SOLAQI is the "strong" one (these terms has no
good or bad connotations, but refer to the Quantum Mech. interpretations)
> Now you, on the other hand, say we need to divide
> things/events/processes into internal versus external. Say we do so.
> You see a bird land on a tree. To you this is two events, the bird
> landing in the tree, and your seeing the bird land in a tree. Well,
> now you've described the event in SOM terms. And so, I ask you:
>
> 1. How do you know there is really an external event, and not that you
> are simply imagining it (a la Descartes' demon)? 2. Suppose there
> really is the external event and the internal event. Now we know
> (based on scientific study of external events) that the information of
> the external event passed into you via photons, which excited cells in
> your retina, etc., but you do not perceive photons or nerve
> excitations, rather you see a bird landing on a tree.
This is just GOOD! It is the empiricists argument and it is watertight.
(Berkeley is a proto-moqite)
> So what can we
> say about the external event in itself, versus what we have produced
> "in our mind"? Kant says nothing at all.
Right. Kant tried to save reason from the "pure reason" of the empiricists,
but only cemented the S/O even firmer. Time, space and causation were
something pre-installed in our minds, yet (as you say) there supposedly
something "out there" but nothing could be said about it.
> So why bother with the
> external event at all (or why is Kant wrong)? 3. Or do you maintain,
> like Ryle and Dennett, that "mind" is not really real, just a word we
> use to group together a set of patterns that are really just external
> events happening in our brain. If so, how do you explain the feeling
> that you seem to exist as something that is NOT external?
> In other words, how do you avoid the platypi that the SOM engenders?
> Now I should confess that I don't think the MOQ as delineated in LILA
> has completely eliminated the mind/matter platypus (but since it is
> primarily an inquiry into morals, that is excusable). However, I would
> agree that the DQ/sq split is a step in the right direction, while
> resurrecting the subject/object split as a metaphysical founding
> principle is a mistake.
Don't spoil it dear Scott :-) The MoQ HAS eliminated the mind/matter
platypus if understood correctly.
Bo
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