Hi David B. and all,
DAVID B.
> And just for the record, Solipsism doesn't just recognize our
"interest" in
> the subjective, it says that the world is CREATED by subjectivity, by
"mind"
> in the classical sense of the word.
>
I basically agree with David's view of solipsism, though I am aware that
I've said many things that he could use in making a solipsism charge
against me, thus I want to clarify things a little.
I basically agree with the above definition, but would specify that the
ultimate solipsist position is that the world is created by MY mind.
According to this view, I would state that only *I* think and choose and
evaluate, but David B's thoughts and choices are mere projections of
*my* mind.
The problem with this view is that it complete undermines the
significance of anyone's thoughts but my own. Whenever I find myself in
the minority, I can dismiss it as my own imagination - with no incentive
to re-evaluate my thinking and expose possible mistakes. This is one
reason why I reject the solipsist view..
My world view is that there are "forces of reality" that act on each of,
with the result that most of us think pretty much alike. Thus I consider
David B. to be a peer, and assume that his thoughts are similar in form
to my own. I have no way of verifying this, but it fits with my
experience of how other people generally behave, and provides pointers
about how I should behave.
DAVID B.
[snip]
>SQ is everything we could ever know or imagine. DQ
>is none of this, but it is the source and mother of all of it.
The solipsist position would be that reality is all SQ, but that all SQ
is a creation of mind!
Thus we could say that the "forces of reality" that I mentioned above,
and that solipsism rejects, correspond to what we call DQ.
Many months ago in a thread entitled "Maps and Metaphors" the main
consensus emerged that SQ is a map of reality, and DQ could perhaps be
considered the terrain. However, there is a problem with the static/map
analogy, because our everyday "map" of reality is ever changing. A
better analogy to a map might be the sort of situation monitoring that
happens in a control room: the video feeds, power dials, motion
indicators etc. give an ever changing picture of who is in the building,
what doors are open, who is on the computer and what Internet sites they
are accessing - but this is all an Image of the real situation. It is as
detailed as the system engineers chose to make it, but never the
"reality" of the building itself. However frequently the picture is
updated, I would still say that it all accords with SQ, even though it
is a dynamic picture, always changing. Thus the "Static" adjective could
be misleading.
Perhaps Pirsig's terminology for his division of Quality should have
been Patterned (the maps) and Unpatterned (the terrain).
Another problem is that the map vs. terrain metaphor implies that the
latter is more real, and that's not something I really like. IMHO the
*real* world we live in is the patterned world we REALise from the
POTENTIAL provided in those "forces of reality".
I'm not sure if any of this makes a difference because I sense an
underlying agreement here despite all the arguments. But how do you say
it? A lot of it comes down to the words we choose, and by now most of
you know what my favourite words are.
Take care all,
Jonathan
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