Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:12:48 +0100
Platt, Squad,
Platt Holden:
>Perhaps you're right about the intellectual level being characterized most
>by its ability to engage in self-reflection. I've wondered if you've ever
>asked yourself who is the self that is doing the reflecting? Who is the
>witness to your thoughts? Who is the I that knows me?
>
>My answer is the unknowable, indefinable, "nothing" of Eastern mysticism
>from which all arises and all returns in each and every instant, the
>Dynamic Qaulity of the MoQ. Does this jibe with your awareness?
No, it seems we are quite far apart on this one. That is quite allright,
but I will try to answer your question above.
Yes, I have asked myself who the self is that is doing the reflecting, this
is what it takes to break out of the Cartesian trap of introspection. I
find the answer in our evolutionary history, this is an answer which was
not possible within the theist dogmatism of a created world, and perhaps
here we have part of the explanation for the difficulty in moving beyond
the metaphysics which blindly presumes the subject-object split.
>From an introspective perspective :-) when we look upon our selves,
wondering what this self is, we are in a kind of trap, like a fishing trap,
where the fish can enter easily through a funnel-shaped hole, but finds
itself seperated from the outside, once it has entered. We find our selves
seperated from the world. If you follow the discussion on one of the many
mailing lists connected with 'the science of consciousness', you will find
most people trapped in this trap. Pirsig calls this trap Subject-Object
Metaphysics (SOM). When you are trapped, you cannot see no way out, you
cannot find no connection between your self and the outside world. People
usually end up haunting a self, a homonunculus, somewhere within, a little
person who keeps slipping through their fingers; or they simply get rid of
the idea of a self, saying, without quite catching the catch: "I find no
use for the concept of self".
But there is a connection between our selves and the outside world, and we
can find it in a roundabout way. Once we have seen this roundabout
connection, we won't be trapped no more, we are now aware of how the trap
works. Trapping fish is easy, - trapping children is another ball game.
We find the connection between our selves and the world in our evolutionary
history. The first step was autonomity, an autonomous entity is the
primeval self. This is why Gregory Bateson builds a concept of mind which
spans the biological, social and intellectual level, and why I consider
this a first step towards completely transcending the SOM trap. (And a
better one than Pirsig's assigning object to the inorganic+biological and
subject to the social+intellectual levels, if we are to make for a path
from SOM to MoQ.)
What makes for the autonomous entity, what is the difference which makes an
organism different from a crystal?
The difference is (and this, our SOM language heritage makes it difficult
to express) that the organism not only simply relates, like the crystal, it
represents. The relation between the organism and its world is of a kind
where the organism at any point has some internal representation of its
world. And by way of this world-representation the organism can move
towards a goal, which in the case of any biological organism is an already
quite complex dynamic stability. A fire will spread according to the level
of fuel, but bacteria will go for the highest quality food source,
neglecting the rest.
And if you ask me why I use such concepts as internal and external, entity
and outside world, and say that I, by using these concepts, am begging the
question, then I will answer affirmatively. The difference between the
inorganic and the biological level is an emergence, the biological level
cannot be explained entirely with concepts from the inorganic level, the
becoming of autonomous entities is a step beyond the inorganic.
There is a long way from the autonomous self of a bacteria to a
self-reflecting child, but the point is that we can look upon our
evolutionary history and provide some explanation of how we entered the
trap of the self looking out at the world. And this in some sense liberates
us from the trap, even though we will always be organisms and selves.
Have I made my self more clear?
Hugo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hugo Fjelsted Alroe alroe@email.dk alroe@vip.cybercity.dk
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