From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 16 2005 - 19:55:54 GMT
Mark, Matt and all MOQers:
Mark Steven Heyman said:
In an earlier post I asked a question about corrective lenses, which
I believe is getting at the same problem. If we agree that our
visual sense data is improved (made more valuable) by wearing
glasses, then what is the relationship between our eyes, the glasses,
and DQ? If DQ creates the sense data, what is being corrected by our
corrective lenses? If DQ is pre-selecting data based on value, then
it seems that DQ is able to get a little help.
dmb replies:
I don't know if I can answer your questions directly, but let us think about
eye glasses and such. It seems to me that your questions contain an
assumption about DQ that is incorrect. They put DQ in the position of
external reality, the reality of things that we look at with our eyes. This
same misconception appears in many forms. In this context, you may have
noticed what Matt and Sam have been doing with DQ...
Matt said:
...The distinction between unmediated and mediated experience is Pirsig's
distinction between Dynamic and static Quality and it is also the
distinction that has traditionally been used to describe the
appearance/reality distinction.
dmb continues:
More specifically, they are equating Kant's things-in-themselves with
Pirsig's DQ. Kant would object to the idea that eye glasses would be of any
help in trying to see the things-in-themselves, but the point is simply that
it is easy to misinterpret the static/Dynamic split if we imagine it in
terms of SOM, in terms of subjects looking out at the objective world. We
can hardly shake the idea. It seems so basic and obvious to the Western mind
that if we ask a person to imagine experience prior to the formation of
subjects and objects, we will almost inevitably imagine a subject having it.
If there is no subject, then who is having the experience, we ask, as if we
have caught the mystic in a logic trap. But if we recall that unmediated
experience is the undivided experience that comes before subjects and
objects, then experience without a subject is exactly what we're talking
about. This idea takes some getting used to, but it is far from illogical.
The problem is that when we look around we "see" a world of objects. And our
worldview tells us that this is not an opinion or an idea or a personal
impression, it tells us that reality is in fact populated by objects and the
light bounces off of them and into our eyes and brain, where the nervous
system forms an analogous image. But that is not quite true. As Pirsig
sketches out, we are taught to see this way. The world as we see it is not a
purely empirical view. Rather we learn to see the world through concepts,
through ideas of subjects and objects. And don't get me wrong here, I'm not
saying the world we percieve is unreal or hallucinatory. Let's not forget
that SOM's metaphysical assumptions are good enough to put a man on the moon
and bend light through all kinds of lenes. That success is very much a part
of the grip it has on us. Its our world and it works beautifully. However,
it has limits and problems when we get to certain areas, areas like morals
and mysticism. In any case, the idea is simply that "objective reality" is
not the primary or fundamental experience, it is an interpretation of the
primary experience. We imagine that there is a world of things out there
whether we know about it perfectly or hardly at all. We Westerners go round
and round debating how closely our perceptions match the external world.
Pirsig isn't entering into that debate at all. He's saying the external
world IS our perception, IS our intellectual interpretation of experience.
If I may repeat myself, this final paragraph comes from yesterday's post to
Matt...
...I think the tricky part is in trying to imagine this unmediated
experience because we just can't help but think of it except in terms of
subjects and objects. This causes confusion. When we Westerners hear phrases
like unmediated experience, direct experince, undivided experience, pure
experience, etc., we tend to imagine it in terms of some clear-eyed subject
getting an accurate picture of the objective world. We're all tempted to
imagine a perfect view of the actual scene. And when we imagine it in those
terms, we have not denied the distinction between appearance and Reality.
Instead, this would be a claim that there is a gap between them and that we
have somehow managed to cross that gap. If we imagine it in terms of
subjects and objects, then Kant and Pirsig would look the same except that
Pirsig would seem to be saying that the unmediated experience is one where
we, the subject, really CAN have knowledge of the things-in-themselves. But
that's not what Pirsig is saying at all. That is just the mistaken
conclusion one reaches when one tries to understand Pirsig in terms of what
he's rejected. And this is a blindspot because we think in terms of subjects
and objects automatically, even if we've never thought about those terms of
so much as opened a philosophy book. See, its not like philosophers suffer
from this alone. Learning to see the world that way is just part of the
maturation process in our culture. We learn it growing up just as we learned
the ABCs. As adults we don't have to sound out any words or memorize
definitions, we just read. All of the stuff we learned as kids is done
automatically so that we don't even know we're doing it. Same with
worldviews. Its so internalized, ingrained in the languange and our
conceptual inheritance that we forget. We forget so thoroughly that trying
to imagine reality without subjects and objects seems a little crazy and
absurd. I mean, stop reading for just a moment and look around the room.
What do you see? An undivided reality? Not likely. You see a bunch of
things, objects. And more than likely there is also a sense that you are
looking at those things from somewhere behind your eyes. As an amatuer
photographer I just can't help but think of human perception in terms of
light bouncing off objects and into my eyes, just as light bounces off the
centerfold and into the camera. But this is the problem. (SOM, not porn.)
Like Buddhism, Pirsig is saying that these kinds of experiences are not
strictly empirical, they are conceptual. SOM is a set a metaphysical
assumptions with which we habitually interpret experience, not experience
itself. This is how Pirsig can deny the appearance/reality distinction. The
blindspot makes it tough to imagine, but he's simply saying that experience
is reality. And since experience is basically just appearance without all
the metaphysical baggage, appearance is reality.
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