Hi Angus:
> You've just struck gold! Jakobson studied a brain
> dysfunction called "aphasia" whereby a person could
> not communicate adequately because he/she had no
> ability for self-reference. Self-reference is what the
> word "meta" gets at. We need self-reference for
> consciousness. So metaphysics is physics about physics
> or as you put it in Pirsigian terms:
> > Quality that created pure experience is by pure
> > experience created.
While I deeply appreciate your accolades I confess to an inability to
grasp your critique of Pirsig and the MOQ. For example, you say, "We
can experience contradictory experiences in one moment" as if
paradoxes were somehow revealing of a metaworld when IMO they are
simply proof of SOM's limits. Language itself is at once
(simultaneously) a meaningful system of meaningless elements,
spoken words as puffs of wind. If you find that self-reference and self-
contradiction (there are no absolutes) are like Zen koans--inexplicable
but unmasking higher truths--then I got a million of 'em. Well, not a
million but at least a couple of dozen I've collected over the years.
What struck me especially about "Quality that created pure experience
is by pure experience created" is the unspoken assumptions of cause
and time. You may be familiar with the conundrum, "How can time be
created when it takes time to create?" So when you made in a previous
post a distinction between spatial and temporal logic, I thought, "Isn't
causation an essential part of logic, and isn't causation time-
dependent?" In other words, logic is so wrapped up in the Kantian
categories of time and space that to separate them is to violate the
meaning of logic.
Another point of my confusion: When you assert DQ cannot be defined
you seem to miss the irony that you just defined it. Like when Pirsig
pointed out that nothing is really full of something.
Finally, your summation of "love is all" is hardly a new idea, having
been around for at least 2000 years and is as about as subjective as
you can get. Are we back to Idealism yet again?
Quite obviously we are talking past each other, having had such
different experiences over our lifetimes that it's difficult to understand
one another. But, let us try (avoiding put down psychological profiles if
you please) . That's what we're here for.
Thanks again for the kind words.
Platt
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