From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sat Jul 23 2005 - 06:16:41 BST
Hi Arlo:
[If you receive this in duplicate it's because my earlier attempt didn't
post for 12 hours.]
[Arlo]
> I'm asking who coined the word "philosophology"
> FOR "socio-cultural sophistication".
I did. I'M the guilty one! I invented the label "socio-political
sophistication" because it characterizes the kind of banter that is going on
here. And I linked it to "philosophology" because I think it's a fitting
label for the various pseudo-analytical positions being defended here
concerning the evolution of Philosophy as distinguished from its essence.
Arlo, your take on reality is so off kilter from my own that I'm afraid it's
useless to talk to you. Everybody looks at the world as some kind of
ordered system. Biologists study its biological order, anthropologists are
fascinated with its evolutionary progression, physicists explore its
quantitative attributes, sociologists are concerned with human interraction.
But it remains for the philosopher to glean meaning and purpose from this
system; and since meaning and purpose are recognized only by human beings
like you and me, the individual is the key factor of philosophy. To ignore
proprietary consciousness is gross negligence on the part of the
philosopher.
One of the bloggers on a philosophy site defined man as the "decision-maker"
of the universe. That's an astute observation. It is man's decisions, and
his willingness to act on them, that changes history, science, culture,
society, and international relations. Man acts as the free agent of this
world. Without sensible experience and human cognizance, there would be no
world. (I believe Mr. Pirsig would agree, though I'm not sure about you.)
Although it's probably a futile exercise because of your inability to either
understand or appreciate my perspective, I'll try to deal with the terms and
assertions you've thrown at me.
[Arlo]
> The great and wonderous "I" is an
> emergent analogue used to describe experience.
> Albert Einstein, for example, said: "A human being
> is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part
> limited in time and space. He experiences himself,
> his thoughts and feelings as something separated from
> the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness."
You define the "I" as an "emergent analogue" which gives the 'self' little
if any support as a real entity. I like Einstein's definition better. He
at least recognizes the "experiences, "thoughts" and "feelings" that are
proprietary to individual awareness, even though he sees them as an "optical
delusion of consciousness'. But, after all, Einstein's reality was the
physical world, and we shouldn't expect a full blown metaphysics from a
scientist.
[Arlo]
> According to Pirsig:
> "Thus, in cultures whose ancestry includes ancient Greece,
> one invariably finds a strong subject-object differentiation
> because the grammar of the old Greek mythos presumed
> a sharp natural division of subjects and predicates.
> In cultures such as the Chinese, where subject-predicate
> relationships are not rigidly defined by grammar,
> one finds a corresponding absence of rigid subject-object
> philosophy."
Yes, I understand these subtle cultural differences, and I've just read
Karen Armstrong's well-researched book on religious mythos. But these
cultural influences
are only ideological; they don't affect the nature of thought or the basic
cognitive process.
>
[Ham previously]
> It ignores the remarkable fact that all experience (on which MoQ bases
> its Quality theory) is proprietary, and that everything experienced is
> "other" to the self.
[Arlo]
> I agree with Einstein that this is a "delusion of consciousness", nothing
more.
What do you believe is delusional? The experience, or the self having the
experience? (If the self is delusional, we're all in a lot of trouble!)
[Arlo]
> I don't argue that there is nothing "unique in potential" about human
> intellect in the world. I argue that this "uniqueness" rests squarely on
> the back of social semiosis.
The phrase "rests squarely on the back of semiosis" is incomprehensible to
me, except to suggest that human intellection is not unique, which of course
I consider an unfortunate result of your semiotic perspective.
Allow me to skip the next paragraph which is more of the same.
[Arlo]
> What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal
> with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos,
> transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of
> common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are
> united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united,
> that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases,
> is not to understand what the mythos is." (Pirsig, ZMM)
Again, you and Pirsig have lost sight of the fact that "common knowledge" is
only the accumulation (i.e. "collection") of facts, concepts and
descriptions that have arisen through the cognitive faculties of individual
human beings. And the "bettering" of our culture is the achievement of
individual "decision-makers", not some ethereal "body of common knowledge
that unites our minds". Despite several of you MoQers' vehement objections
to the term, what you
are really defining here is a "collective consciousness". And I think
almost anyone outside of this forum would see it as such.
[Arlo]
> Have you ever had a "conscious thought" that was not
> semiotically mediated in any way? Explain this to me.
I have only recently been introduced to semiotics, which I understand to be
a representational or "symbolic" concept of reality. All my thoughts are
"mediated" by my sensibilities, intellect, esthetic preferences, and
environmental conditioning. However, this is not to say that my thoughts
are not real or not under my possession.
[Ham, previously]
> Doesn't it concern you that such collectivist definitions totally
> evade the conscious entity itself -- the Possessor of awareness?
> You have constructed your world-view as if the individual didn't exist.
[Arlo]
> No. And I haven't. I just don't need to place the "I" as some great and
> wonderful external "thing". "I" am completely comfortable knowing it is
> simply an analogue I use to participate in social semiosis.
>
> I don't "possess awareness". I experience. And, if Quality so demands, I
> selectively organize that experience into intellectual patterns based on
> my social-cultural semiotic. And I say that "I experience" as a useful
> analogue.
It may be useful. But it's not accurate or definitive. What it suggests is
that you have no self, that Arlo Bensinger is an analogue with no essential
reality. (In which case I'm communicating with a semiotic fantasy.)
[Arlo persists]
> By your strong need to place an "I" so above and external, I am
> reminded of another Einstein saying, this one actually quoted in ZMM.
> "He makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his
> emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and serenity
> which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
I like that statement, too. We all identify with a reality that we can call
"ours". That's the nature of human experience, isn't it?
[Ham, previously]
> Is there some mysterious force I'm yet unaware of that causes
> socio-cultural change in the absence of the individual?
> From my anthropocentric perspective, all this talk about
> artifacts, semiosis, mythos, and analogues is utterly
> meaningless.
[Arlo]
> I'm sorry to hear that, Ham. If arguing and expositing on a grand and
> glorius "I", possessor of awareness, locus of conscious thought
> independant of social semiosis, is "meaningful" for you,
> then by all means, continue. Just know that not everyone shares
> this particular ego-driven need, and some of us find it
> foolish. But, you have to follow your own quest for meaning, eh?
>
> And, no, there is no "force" that causes socio-cultural change in the
> absense of the individual. Just like there is no "individual"
> (apart from the biological pattterns) in the absense of socio-cultural
> mediation. This is the dialectic relation you continue to miss.
Just for that I'm not going to tell you the meaning of human existence!
I'll let you discover it for yourself -- that is, if you can find it
anywhere
in your semiotic system.
Anyway, I'm encouraged to learn that you "think that freedom maximizes any
individual's ability to be a potential evolutionary catalyst."
Essentially yours (from one catalyst to another),
Ham
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