Hi David and the cast of thousands!
David Buchanan wrote:
> I'm really enjoying this thread.
Me Too.
> Roger's method of presenting questions to the group has been a great
> help in revealing a pattern I would not have seen otherwise.
Yes, Thanks Risky Roger! Maybe you could help out on the LS?
> I think it is the former, solipsistic view
> that leads Roger and Mary to conclude that awareness begins only at the
> biological level. I think this view of inorganic patterns contradicts
> the very heart of the MOQ. All observable phenomena are patterns of
> value. Even inorganic patterns are "alive" and aware, although they have
> no thoughts or self-consciousness. Those are only found at the
> intellectual level.
David, you're going to have to explain this some more for me. Maybe we
aren't using the same definition of awareness? Solipsistic or not ;), I
have a very hard time calling inorganic matter aware. Matter/energy
does have experiences, but having an experience and even reacting to it
are not the same things as being aware of the experience. What say you?
> The law of gravity is just a set of intellectual patterns of value. This
> is meaningless as a cosmological claim. It can't mean that "objects"
> fall only because we think they will. It can't mean that the Earth
> orbits the Sun only because we think it does. (Wish I had that kind of
> power!) It just that Pirsig wants to topple the notion that "the law of
> Gravity" is something more than just a mental picture of a more primary
> reality. Children fell and scraped their knees long before Newton ever
> invented the law of gravity. This has to be seen as an epistemological
> claim to make sense.
We have always been aware of the force of gravity, its just that prior
to the statement of the law itself we had no linguistic static latch for
it. A pronouncement of the law of gravity is truly just an intellectual
level (SOM) construct to define (linguicize?) something we all
previously understood perfectly well. I mean, without a law of gravity,
we'd all have to talk about it in terms like, "Oh, you know Simon, that
thing that happens when you throw a rock off the tower of Pisa? Well it
happened to me the other day when I tripped over that big pile of rocks
at the bottom, fell to the ground, and THEN was struck on the head by
another one! How many times do those guys up there have to do that
before they agree that the rock is always going to strike the ground? I
tell you, Simon, I much preferred the feathers."
>
> Just one more thought. I agree with Jeff's response to Mary. Pirsig's
> painful DQ experience came first, the hard work to explain it came
> afterward. I'll go even further and say the MOQ was invented to explain
> the mystical experience, both his own and that of American Indians.
> Pirsig says "...this whole metaphysics had started with an attempt to
> explain Indian mysticism" (page 109 Lila HB)
Yes, you are right about the chain of events, but see my response to
Jeff too.
Best wishes,
Mary
MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:54 BST