From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Nov 27 2004 - 14:09:47 GMT
Scott,
Thanks for explaining what you meant by a "new level of thinking." From
your description it seems that what you're talking about is not new
thought but old understanding.
> It is not so much writing a paragraph or two in "new thought", but having a
> different intellectual attitude to the old paradoxes. For example, DMB has
> quoted Sri Ramana Maharshi a couple of times:
> The world is illusory;
> Brahman alone is real;
> Brahman is the world.
The limits of ordinary logic were well known by Western philosophers even
before Godel formalized it's basic contradiction. A typical illustrative paradox
used in the West is: "The present never changes, but everything that
changes changes in the present."
> In ordinary logic, this is simply self-contradictory. In the logic of
> contradictory identity, it is accepted as "the way it is". Buddhism is
> known as the Middle Way. Originally, this referred to avoiding the
> lifestyle extremes of hedonism (pursuit of the transitory things of the
> world) and ascetism (rejection of those things). With Nagarjuna, it also
> became applied to avoiding either pole of an apparent paradox, but to learn
> to see the two poles as necessarily in mutual contradiction, while being
> mutually constituting. So, in considering the self, when one thinks of the
> self as being a continuous, existing thing, to offset this with the
> realization that I am not the same person today that I was yesterday, while
> when one thinks that I am not the same person today that I was yesterday,
> to point out that I am *aware* of the change, so there is a continuity
> between yesterday's self and today's. Hence, the continuity points to
> saying "the self exists", while the change points to saying "the self does
> not exist", and so one says neither. Furthermore, the awareness of change
> presupposes the continuity, while if there were nochange to be aware of,
> there would be no awareness of continuity. This implies that awareness *is*
> this interplay of continuity and change, and that the interplay of
> continuity and change *is* what makes awareness happen.
Pirsig's four levels constituting the "self" appear to cover these matters
fairly well. The inorganic remains mostly the same, parts of the
biological level change not at all (DNA, fingerprints), the social milieu
changes to some degree depending on circumstances but family relationships
remain constant, and the intellectual is bound to unchanging mathematical,
logic and language syntax. So simultaneous stability and change is not
something unique or strange, leading me to wonder what's to be gained by
having a "new intellectual attitude" toward the rather obvious.
> Thus, the step
> toward thinking in terms of contradictory identity is that of going from
> just treating the self as paradox to treating the self as a locus of
> contradictory identity. Or, contradictory identity is not just a way to
> think about the self, rather, contradictory identity is what makes the self
> happen.
I don't follow your argument that the interplay of constancy and change
make self and awareness happen. Seems to me that self begins at birth and
ends at death while awareness (mind) is what the bulb of nerve tissue we
call the brain links to.
> One can apply the same logic to DQ and SQ, but if one does, one gets
> something different from the treatment of these as given in the MOQ. The
> MOQ tends to idolize DQ at the expense of SQ, for example by assuming that
> the mystical goal is to experience pure DQ by putting all SQ to sleep. But
> the logic of contradictory identity will see that as going off the Middle
> Way. DQ and SQ are contradictory identities, so it makes no sense to speak
> of "pure [DQ] experience" which is then SQ-ized by intellect. Rather, DQ/SQ
> interaction is what makes experience happen.
I agree with Steve that you may have misinterpreted the MOQ. Quality is
pure experience (mind) which for intellectual purposes Pirsig divides into
Dynamic and static.
Where we may agree is on the nature of consciousness (mind) as stated by
physicist Erwin Schoedinger: "The external world and internal
consciousness are one and the same thing." Pirsig adds the notion that
consciousness (mind) is essentially a moral force. Now that's something
really new to modern philosophy.
Platt
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