Hello all.
In my short break from the keyboard and this list I did do some reading
(and haul a tractor out of a river - don't ask), but I couldn't keep away
so...
I'm back in a shadowy way with a promise to myself to post just once a week
for a while. Perhaps we won't want this list to go quiet like a society of
friends meeting house, but the quaker principle (if you can't think of
anything good to say shut up) could maybe be dusted off for use now and
then.
I'd like to know where we are up to with the awareness thing since I took
time out (I'm always hoping that *something* will be sorted out once and for
all on this list). Here's the post I couldn't keep from sending Platt the
week before last, even though to save my inbox I'd signed off the list and
couldn't post it there. I hoped he'd post it for me together with his
comeback. Trouble is - he'll have to post the comeback all over again, now
that I'm back to hear it.
Well, if there's to be a comeback, here's what there's to be a comeback to:
>>> ELEPHANT:
>>> We can attribute any property we like to patterns of quality. Awareness
>>> is *not* a property.
>>>
>>> (A property would be a property of an *object* - but the reality of
>>> awareness is, like that of quality, prior to both subjects and objects.
>>> That is the same as saying that awareness is prior to (the operation of)
>>> language. Being prior to language it is also prior to atoms, which are
>>> linguistic entities.)
>
> PLATT:
>> Let’s see. “Awareness” is prior to language and not a “linguistic entity.”
>> Doesn’t this self-contradiction give you a moment’s pause?
>
> ELEPHANT:
> You may have to be more helpful, and perhaps on a later occasion - I don't
> quite know what you mean. *Perhaps* you have generated a contradiction by the
> insertion of those quotation marks around "awareness" - this is my best
> guess. If that's the case, I would like to point out that I didn't mention
> "awareness", I mentioned awareness. Obviously the *word* "awareness" is a
> linguistic entity. But if I had *meant* to talk about the *word* "awareness"
> in that sentence, rather than *that to which it refers*, I would have *said*
> "awareness" with the quotation marks. I didn't. Is that clear?
>
> PLATT:
>> Also, you seem to make a distinction between objects and patterns of
>> value.
>
> ELEPHANT:
> Do I Platt? This is news to me, and I'm just looking back over that post to
> see the seeming that seems to you: and I can't. Take it from me: by "object"
> I do not mean anything different from patterns of value. That might be the
> explanation for the fact that I didn't *say* I meant anything different from
> patterns of value.
>
> PLATT:
> Hear Pirsig:
>>
>> PIRSIG:
>> “This may sound as though a purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is
>> to trash all subject-object thought but that's not true. Unlike subject-
>> object metaphysics the Metaphysics of Quality does not insist on a
>> single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be the
>> ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of
>> things—that which corresponds to the "objective" world—and all other
>> constructions are unreal. But if Quality or excellence is seen as the
>> ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of
>> truths to exist.”
>
> PLATT:
>> In other words, not only can SOM live side by side with the MOQ, it must
>> because the language of subjects and objects has to used to describe
>> the MOQ.
>
> ELEPHANT:
> I think you will find that it is the Subject-Object *dichotomy* which lives
> side by side with the MOQ, *not* the Subject-Object *METAPHYSICS*. Hence
> RMP's discussing of "subject-object thought", not "subject-object metaphysics"
> in the passage above. Note also the scope oporator "all" in the sentence
> "This may sound as though a purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is to trash
> all subject-object thought but that's not true." I.E. *some* SO thought is
> being difinitively trashed, the bit that we can call a "metaphysics". When do
> you step over the line from "subject-object thought" to "subject-object
> metaphysics"? You already know my answer. It's when you abandon the "as if".
>
> PLATT:
>> But, in spite of our disagreement on whether objects are patterns of
>> value or not...
>
> ELEPHANT:
> Objection!
>
> PLATT:
>> ...we do agree that awareness is like Quality. In fact, I
>> submit that Quality and awareness are synonymous.... [snip]
>
> ELEPHANT:
> LIKE quality, yes. Synonymous, no. Your dictionary rewiting project is
> trully awesome (your ambition is to be admired: such a suggestion comes from
> no coward!). The futhest I will go is to say that perhaps the separation
> between Quality and Awareness is the the cut *before* Pirsig's "first cut"
> i.e. the cut between DQ and SQ. But unlike the DQ/SQ cut, which comes about
> as a result of the advent of language (which requires states of affairs
> instead of a flux, and numbers out the world), it seems to me that the
> distinction between Quality or the Good, and our state of being in relation to
> it, which is awareness, is fundamental. Awareness is a relation to quality.
> Now it is a fact that my relatives cannot be me, for the simple reason that
> they are my relatives. What is in relation to a thing cannot be that thing:
> this is fairly common sense. It could be that one could get "quality" and
> "awareness" to mean the same thing - but if that project succeeded, the
> expression "aware *of*..." would suddely become nonsensical, and since that
> expression is the major component of the grammar of "aware", this doesn't seem
> like much of an improvement.
>
>
> All the best to you Platt, and I hope we resume our conversation properly in
> a week or two. In the meantime, as and when you post this, feel free to get
> your comeback in early.
>
> Elephant
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