Hello.
I guess Magnus's post is really directed at me, so I owe him a reply to the
points he makes.
MAGNUS WROTE:
Take, for example, the position of many squad members that the
social, biological and inorganic levels are just subdivisions within the
intellectual level. For one thing, it falsifies Pirsig's claim that the
first division is the static/dynamic split, then the static is divided into
four levels. Instead it becomes three divisions, first static/dynamic, then
the static is just intellectual, then the three sublevels. Or it becomes,
intellectual/dynamic, then the three sublevels. But it's not important that
it it falsifies Pirsig's claim, what's important is that the reality doesn't
fit such a division.
ELEPHANT:
I agree on the last point, but since this is a place to discuss
Prisig, I do have an exegetical point to make in support of "the postion of
many squad members". I would suggest that Prisig is much more strongly
committed to the truth of his claim that the first split is the
Static/Dynamic, than is to the subsequent talk of precisely four levels. He
treats the latter analysis is a useful way of making sense of the 20th
Century, whereas the former point he treats as cutting up reality at the
joints. At the end of Lila he is prepared to conceed that it is impossible
to 'play a perfect game of chess' in any fully developed metaphysical
picture, but he is nowhere prepared to conceed that the basic static-dynamic
split could be improved on. Moreover, I would say that in it's struggle with
it's own static patterns intellect will *look* like a pattern amoughst
others, and like a competing level amougst others. For this reason, for the
purposes of a history of the 20th Century, the schema of levels that Prisig
adopts is entirely the right one. But there are other purposes out there.
One such might be for us to make it possible for Lila to transcend all
patterns rather than remaining attached to those that surround her, and
getting back on Rigel's boat. It is while having precisely this purpose in
mind that Prisig talks about intellect as having a special relation to the
mystic that the other levels do not have. Further, there are hints of
connection to buddhist thought throughout Lila and particularly in those
concluding passages I have referred to. And if you follow those hint up and
explore Buddhism itself, the modified picture of levels that I have
suggested is the one that is better supported there. This is because
Buddhist metaphysics has just one purpose: ie to set out the path to
enlightenment, whereas Prisig's metaphysics combine this purpose with the
purpose of wanting something informative to say about 20th Century America.
The two purposes are not wholly incompatible (in fact it is Prisig's genius
to have made them complementary), but they are not the same purpose, and it
shows.
MAGNUS WROTE:
... it's not important that it it falsifies Pirsig's claim,
what's important is that the reality doesn't fit such a division.
Take for example the time of the universe before we showed up. If there were
no intellectual beings around, who was there to intellectually perceive all
the inorganic, biological and social patterns out there? It sounds like that
time is unimportant - no, not only unimportant, non-existent! It's problems
like this that causes people to come to the conclusion that the universe is
just a big sleeping giant dreaming it all up, and that's not a very
attractive universe in my book.
ELEPHANT:
This is one I get all the time (outside MOQ) so I ought to be (a) getting
better at answering it or (b) acknowledging the error of my ways. Sadly
neither seems to happen, as I remain convinced that it is a non-question,
and tend to say so, at length. "If there were no intellectual beings
around, who was there to intellectually perceive all the inorganic,
biological and social patterns out there?" Well, no-one. And your point
is? And your point is that this means that I am denying the existence of
the universe before the appearance of man, and re-inventing some creation
story in denial of all the geological and evolutionary facts? Well of
course I'm not. Intellectual patterns just aren't what fossilise, so the
argument is entirely fatuous. Investigating a strata of fossilised shells
in Lyme Regis Bay, I won't ever come accros an intellectual pattern and cry
out to my colleague: 'hey, look, I found an intellectual pattern and it's
over a hundred million years old!'. No intellectual pattern sits in the
dark for a hundred million years waiting for an observant beachcomber. What
sits inside that rock for millions of years waiting to fall out is not an
intellectual pattern but something to which we *apply* intellectual
patterns. I do feel like I'm stating the obvious here. And given that it
is something to which we apply intellectual patterns, there is nothing to
prevent us concluding that the bit of stuff that these intellectual patterns
pick out is a hundred million years old. But that doesn't necessitate
projecting the intellectual patterns back to before there were intellects,
and I would say that anyone who does that is perpetrating some very wholly
thinking. Obviously there are few contexts in which great precision is
required about such things. This happens to be one of them.
The intelligent rider to what I've just advanced would be that if we project
bits of stuff back millions of years then that too is projecting back an
intellectual pattern, because 'bit' and 'stuff' are conceptualisations.
That's a fair point in its way - a perceptive remark that leads us to the
heart of things. The answer I'd give is that conceptualisations date to
the time of conceiving, not the time they are projected onto. No one is
saying that the concept of a sabre-tooth tiger is several million years old:
it's the tiger obviously! Eventually we do get down to concepts where one
can no-longer remove the concept and leave a 'what the concept is about'
remaing: the what it is projected onto. But the reason for this is that
ultimately what 'sabre-tooth tiger' denotes is a conceptual/static pattern
reality, constructed from our observations of fossils in just the same way
that what 'tiger' denotes has everything to do with our observations of
tigers. If it looks like a tiger, roars like a tiger, and eats you like a
tiger: it's a tiger. There's no 'hidden reality' of tiger there beyond
these observed characteristics, not even in the case of real live modern day
tigers you can visit in the Zoo. There's no metaphysical 'thing-in-itself'
here for us to get troubled about. And that being the case, neither is
there any metaphysical 'sabre-toothed-tiger-in-itself' behind some fossil to
project back fifty million years and use in an argument against a poor
defenceless Elephant!
The sabre-toothed tiger just is those observations of fossils - we have no
other connection with it. It happens to suit some practical purposes for us
to behave *as if* there were a thing-in-itself here, a kantian noumena, and
to date that noumenal sabre-toothed tiger to the pre-intellectual era. But
this is a useful assumption in paleontology - not a philosophical truth for
all times and purposes. It suits other purposes, let us say the purpose of
coherence and truth in philosophical argument, to point out that this makes
no real sense: that there is no tiger-in-itself, and that the concept of a
sabre-toothed tiger is a modern day phenomenon that has it's place in an
account of static patterns existing right now, not 50 million years ago.
So, when we comb that beach, try to remember that even 'bit of stuff' refers
to no noumenal reality, but to a conceptual one, something being entertained
at that exact moment by you, the intellect.
MAGNUS WROTE:
BTW Elephant, I see now where you got the idea that intellect/non-intellect
maps exactly to the static/dynamic split. But please don't do that, I hate
to say it but if I don't, Bo will. You're getting awfully close to the
mind/matter dichotomy here and we all know where that leads.
ELEPHANT:
It's not where the mind/matter dichotomy *leads* that's the problem: it's
where it's *at*. And where it's at is a dichotomy or division between two
distinct kinds of substance, which, since they are substances of different
kinds, cannot be related in any way. The mind/body problem is the problem
of how the one can interact with and control another, and it is wholly
attributeable to this division between two kinds of substance. But since I
haven't mentioned substance *at all* in my discussion of intellect, I just
have no idea what you are talking about or objecting to in my account.
Sure, I'm positing an intellect/non-intellect dichotomy, but so does anyone
who uses the word 'intellect' with any meaning at all. What's the problem?
Moreover, the dichotomy I have in mind is self evidently not one of
substance, since the dynamic continuity I attribute to the world is
precisely the *absence* of any substance. 'Substance' here means 'the
variety of subject matter which relations and attributes are properties of,
as "red haired" is a property of "Queen 'Bess"': that's why dualism about
substance is such a problem, philosophically speaking, because it denies, by
definition, the possibility of a relation to something outside that
substance. But Dynamic Quality isn't a substance! Prisig said as much.
So, again, what's the problem?
I'm not a dualist about substance, in just the same way that Prisig isn't a
Dualist about substance. He is a kind of dualist, as am I, because we both
divide the world into static patterns (my all embracing level of
intellectual stuff) and dynamic quality. But this is no mind/matter
dualism, because the mind/matter dualism is a dualism of substance. As I am
at a loss to understand your point, it is probably better if I shut up and
invite you to explain yourself.
I wonder whether your point is that I attribute some real and fundamental
existence to consciousness, the creator-intellect, and that Prisig doesn't
do this? So that whereas Prisig has a two-way division, I break things up
three ways - Is that your point? Well if that is your veiw of Prisig, I
think it is wrong. The static/dynamic division is intended as a division of
the *experienced* world, and the Subject-Object metaphysics he opposes is
also a metaphysics of the experienced word: paradigmatically of the world
availiable to scientific study. It was quite apparent in my reading of both
books that Prisig attributes important being and agency to the
*experiencer*, and that there is a level, beyond personality and 'I' (those
faces of the 'subject' which can be open to investigation like any object),
on which that consciousness has a real existence and role which Prisig pays
proper attention to. The key worry about subjects in Prisigian metaphysics
is just the same as the worry about objects: the worry is that we elevate
the subject to an object by means of ego and self-image. This matches
perfectly with the Zen thought that Prisig draws much of his inspiration
from, and in Buddhism the goal is the transcending of the objectivised
subject - 'I'. But all this transcending is done somewhere, and the
somewhere that it is done is consciousness.
Yours constructively...
Pzeph
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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