Struan,
thanks for your answer.
> I'm not sure what we are arguing about here. Your interpretation in points
A to D is fine by me,
> (although I suspect others will worry that it maintains a strong
mind/matter dualism), but I'm sure
> we both realise that this wasn't what Pirsig meant. What am I missing?
>
hmmm... what are you missing?
IMHO The point
> 4) "Quality occurs at the point at which subject and object meet"
>
doesn't imply this comment:
> Absolutely. Note that mind has become subject and matter, object. Can we
use
> these interchangeably?
> Quality occurs at the point at which mind and matter meet. Fine with me.
>
During a quality event, the mind/matter meeting (seemingly) happens, but
there's no awareness. When mind elaborates the sensorial data, there's the
subject/object meeting, AKA awareness. Mind/matter and subject/object are
not interchangeable, they're different. I don't see a "subtle shift from
mind and matter to subject and object" in Pirsig's points 1=>4.
Consequentially:
> 6) "It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object"
>
> Again. It is the event at which mind becomes aware of matter. Ok
I don't agree: mind is not aware of matter. Nor it's aware of itself as it
is. In fact:
>
> 7) "And because without objects there can be no subject, quality is the
> event at which awareness of
> both subjects and objects is made possible."
>
Mind is aware of subject (as idea of the mind) and of object (as idea of the
matter).
According to my interpretation, we have a coherent situation in which mind
and matter can (seemingly) exist also separately, where subject and object
can't. And also coherent
with Pirsig's assumption:
> 1)"In the Metaphysics of Quality the world is composed of three things:
> mind, matter and Quality."
In fact we have matter, mind (forming and containing subject and object as
"ideas",
but not containing matter of course), and quality (as event). The existence
of the
quality event (the ZAMM quality) is not explained by the existence of mind
and/or matter. It's something else, and I don't see any "strong
mind/matter dualism".
The problem of all this argument is that we are simply imagining a universe
composed by me, a carpet and a single quality event. But enlarging the
vision to the whole universe (calling universe not only the "real" (?)
current universe, but also all what's past, and all the virtual creations of
fantasy) we know that we have an infinite number of correlated quality
events every time, and that these events change the universe itself,
altering both mind and matter. This "alteration" is explained by Pirsig (in
Lila): what we are calling "mind" or "matter" are ... individuals, formed
through time with a progressive stratification of the values selected and
fixed during quality events, according to stable configurations, AKA static
patterns.
In this sense past quality event preconditioned the existence of current
universe (matter and mind comprised). The conclusion is that not only the
quality event is a third entity not explained by the existence of mind
and/or matter (ZAMM), but, at the contrary, the existence of mind and matter
is explained by the existence of past quality events (LILA).
Marco
p.s.
But if this is "Not Struan's" who was the creator of this "not a Syllogism"?
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