From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Sat Apr 23 2005 - 20:26:05 BST
Ian, Steve,
Ian said:
I used to worry about the apparent rational vs anti-rational and/or
irrational debate.
Zen / Pirsigian MoQ, is not a matter of rejecting rationality, it's a
matter of rejecting "logical-positivism" (or similar) as the only
valid kind of rationality.
So rather than a "Flight From Reason",
we have a "Flight To New Reason"
Scott:
Right, only it's about 1800 years old (Nagarjuna). More recently, Coleridge
called it "polar logic", and more recently still, Nishida called it the
logic of contradictory identity. It is related, I think, to Derrida's
*differance". Franklin Merrell-Wolff described it as follows:
"While in the State [of High Indifference, as he called it], I was
particularly impressed with the fact that the logical principle of
contradiction had no relevancy. It would not be correct to say that this
principle was violated, but rather, that it had no application. For to
isolate any phase of the State was to be immediately aware of the opposite
phase as the necessary complementary part of the first. Thus the attempt of
self-conscious thought to isolate anything resulted in the immediate
initiation of a sort of flow in the very essence of consciousness itself, so
that the nascent isolation was transformed into its opposite as co-partner
in a timeless reality....It seemed to be the real underlying fact of all
consciousness of all creatures." [Experience and Philosophy, p.286]
The following is from a post from a couple of months ago:
"The closest I have been able to come to what I think M-W is referring to is
when I think about consciousness, in particular to its durational and
changing aspects. To be aware of a change (say one note to another in a
melody), something had to endure across the change. But to be aware of the
enduring (both notes as one melody, or even one continuous note), something
had to change. So conscious is not changing because it is changing, and it
is changing because it is not changing. One can't get out of this
contradictoriness with the idea that a part is staying the same while a part
is changing, since that just pushes the problem back to the part that is
staying the same: how can it be aware of change without changing, and if it
is enduring through the change, how can it be changing?"
BTW (to Ian in re the Access to Quality thread), this was my 'aha' moment
that convinced me that science was hopeless in explaining consciousness. If
one presupposes that consciousness occurs within the spacetime box, then the
durational aspect of consciousness is impossible.
- Scott
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