From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 11:59:16 BST
Hi Scott
[Paul pre:] The intellectual construction of a contradictory dichotomy
is,
in MOQ terms, no more than an intellectual pattern of values formulated
from complex symbolic abstractions. So to solve a "contradictory
identity" paradox one simply rejects the contradictory dichotomy in
favour of non-paradoxical experience. I believe this is the approach
that Nagarjuna and the Wisdom Sutras are advocating.
[Scott:]
Where does the abstraction come from?
[Paul:]
Experience
[Scott:]
Where does the intellectual construction come from?
[Paul:]
Thinking about experience
[Scott:]
Why the phrase "no more than an intellectual pattern"?
[Paul:]
Generally speaking, working through a logical problem in thought doesn't
have social, biological or inorganic implications.
[Scott:]
This is nominalism, and it is the great error that needs to be overcome.
[Paul:]
Intellectual patterns are symbols standing for patterns of experience. I
accept that intellectual patterns refer to patterns of value, this can
be tested by anyone. What I am saying is that taking such symbols and
further abstracting from them theoretically independent aspects of
experience such as "self" and "not self", then reflecting them back onto
hypothetical experience as paradoxes is the great error.
[Scott:]
The ability to abstract, or to create an intellectual pattern, is a
complete and utter mystery.
[Paul:]
Agreed.
[Scott:]
As to "reject[ing] the contradictory dichotomy in favor of
non-paradoxical experience", well, why not just give oneself a frontal
lobotomy? Why have we bothered to become human at all?
[Paul:]
To experience.
[Scott:]
Nishida is a philosopher, and his especial interest is in providing a
philosophical "account" of Zen. {The scare quotes around "account" are
to note that he is not attempting to describe mystical "experience"
itself.) The function of the logic of contradictory identity is in no
sense to be taken as a solution to the big questions ("What is
emptiness?", "What am I"). It is to prevent one from mistaking any
possible non-contradictory identity for a solution. Such a false
solution becomes an idol, a false god.
The pursuit of "pure experience" can be one such false god. While
Nirvana is the "blowing out" of concepts like self and non-self, to stop
there is to ignore that emptiness is not other than form (like
self/other).
[Paul:]
Agreed. Attachment to non-attachment is also attachment. You cross the
river, look back and see the side you were trying to reach is the one
you set off from!
[Paul prev:] The point is that "self" and "not-self" are never given in
experience, they are arrived at through abstraction, so to say they are
one and the same is just to say that they are derived from a unified
experience.
[Scott:] Well, I think saying they are never given in experience is
incorrect. If there are no distinctions, there is no experience, and for
human beings at this stage in our evolution, the primary distinction is
between self and non-self.
[Paul:]
I was obviously unclear about this. Of course empirical experience is
differentiated, but we never experience differentiations on their own.
If we did, they wouldn't be differentiations. When we experience
something on its own, we are enlightened, for then experience is without
differentiation. So we never experience "self" OR "not-self". We
experience "self" AND "not-self" together, make and maintain
distinctions symbolically and isolate them for analysis.
[Scott:]
The change in thinking that I propose to
relate "experience", "self", and "non-self" is not that "self" and
"non-self" are intellectual abstractions we impose on experience, but
that experience in itself is the creation of the self and the other. It
can also create in other contradictory identities.
[Paul:]
So do you believe that the symbols pick out natural breaks in
experience?
[Scott:]
Like Nagarjuna (I think: I'm not expert enough to be sure, but this is
my impression), the L of CI does not say the self and the non-self are
"one and the same". It says that they are the same and they are not the
same, that the self exists by negating itself, that there is no
bottoming out in a "unified experience". Instead, all experience is this
interplay of the one and the many, and Awakening is realizing this
bottomlessness, aka, impermanence.
[Paul:]
Sounds okay. By "unified experience" in that statement, I didn't mean
anything exceptional, just everyday experience.
[Paul prev:]
For example, "time as duration" and "time as discrete events" are
just abstracted descriptions of how one can conceive of "time", so the
only contradiction is in the hypothetical sense that an experience can
be described in terms of duration or in terms of events. The description
has no bearing on empirical experience.
[Scott:] Again, whence the "just abstracted descriptions"?
[Paul:]
From experience. "Time" is a term invented to describe an aspect of
experience. We all experience it, yet nobody can explain it by
abstraction. Although many have tried.
[Scott:]
In any case,
these "abstractions" became very real to me in trying to discern how a
computer could be aware. This is because a computer is designed
explicitly to treat time as discrete events solely, and this makes
awareness impossible. Hence the difference between a person and a
computer is that the former actually does experience duration as well as
discrete events.
[Paul:]
Well, this is a logical deduction made from the prior assumption that
awareness does actually equate to time as duration and time as discrete
events. Very interesting though.
[Paul prev:] In terms of "DQ" and "SQ", I would say they refer to
complementary aspects of experience which have been abstracted
symbolically by Pirsig to provide a metaphysical conception of a process
of experience. They are also static divisions of experience.
[Scott:] I would say that "complementary" does not cover it. They are
opposed, and by opposing constitute the process experience, Experience
is never just static or just dynamic. Once named, the names are, of
course, static.
[Paul:]
"Experience is never just static or just dynamic"
Precisely. They are isolated only by abstraction and analysis. Like
"self" and "not self".
[Paul prev:]"Since in the MOQ all divisions of Quality are static it
follows
that high and low are subdivisions of static quality. "Static" and
"Dynamic" are also subdivisions of static quality, since the MOQ is
itself a static intellectual pattern of Quality." [Lila's Child Note 86]
[Scott:] Once the words are chosen, one has a static pattern. But the
choosing of these words by Pirsig was a result of the tension between DQ
and SQ. Our reading of them is also a tension between DQ and SQ.
[Paul:]
Agreed!
[Paul prev:] As such, all static divisions collapse into a
non-intellectual
monism referred to by Pirsig as Quality, so whilst your "DQ is SQ, SQ is
DQ" is not an incorrect conclusion, I think it is an unnecessary
overhead to a simpler understanding, and is perhaps another symptom of
"endless thinking"...
[Scott:] See the discussion of the neo-Platonic One above. They do not
collapse into a non-intellectual monism called Quality, because Quality
is not other than DQ/SQ *and* its description (the MOQ) *and* its denial
(SOM) *and* endless thinking.
[Paul:]
Okay "all static divisions collapse into a non-intellectual monism
referred to by Pirsig as Quality" seems like a brush-it-under-the-carpet
solution. You want to avoid the finality. I agree with that sentiment
but I acknowledge the limits of intellect in articulating the ineffable.
[Paul prev:]"In the thinking realm there is a difference between oneness
and
variety; but in actual experience, variety and unity are the same.
Because you create some idea of unity or variety, you are caught by the
idea. And you have to continue the endless thinking, although actually
there is no need to think." [Shunryu Suzuki, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"
p.120]
Or is this Nishida's point?
[Scott:] No. Nishida would say that variety and unity are not the same,
yet are the same, and as long as that contradictory identity is borne in
mind, one will not get caught by the idea of just variety (as
materialists do), or just unity (as centric mystics do), or both unity
and variety (as dualists do), or neither unity nor variety (as nihilists
do).
As to "no need to think", maybe and maybe not. Nagarjuna, and I think
Nishida, saw their work to be soteriological, to clear out ideas that
restrict one's experiencing ("false views", or idols). Thinking, like
any experience, *is* endless, in the sense of being always open (which I
realize is not what Suzuki means). The function of the L of CI is to
keep it open, if one's experiencing is of the thinking variety (again: I
see the view of thinking as somehow being opposed to experiencing to be
more nominalism). On the other hand, to be able to be detached from it
is a good thing, for which one needs Zen-type discipline.
[Paul:]
I see thinking very much as part of experience, but not the whole thing
and not in a "directionally creator relation" to experience [I'm not
ready to accept that aspect of Barfield].
I guess this particular discussion comes down to whether one sees
"contradictory identity" as something imposed by thought on experience
or something inherent and natural in both [thought and experience]?
[Scott:]
It is getting late, so a response to your other post will have to
wait.
[Paul:]
Look forward to it!
Cheers
Paul
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