Wotchers geezers (don't know what it means exactly, but it has to be an old
English greeting. Learned this from Horse, so you know who to blame if it's
anything offensive :-))
Maybe you have noticed my silence (maybe not :-(), but I've been too much catched
up in work to be able to respond to the great posts of late and contribute to the end of the
99% solution thread. I'm OK with your last summary in this thead Rog, great work! I think the
comments Horse and Magnus made were excellent and that we certainly reached some
agreement. I would have loved to contribute more, but I'm sort of in a 'time-prison' and
unfortunately it's getting worse (how about this Kafka-ish beginning).
The explaining of the sometimes ambigues words we use, has cleared up
the discussion a lot for me and I think (hope) for others too. I liked the continuation of
David of my leaf-example so much that I wanted to put it out here just one more
time before it can settle itself in the warm MoQ-archive.
David:
>I'll address the leaf analogy from another perspective. If
>patterns of value are both morally sound and factually correct, then the
>leaf demonstates knowledge of the wind in its' very structure. Think of
>the supple stem that lets the leaf flutter in the wind, or the way palm
>leaves are designed to survive hurricane winds . . . The structure of all
>patterns of value is somehow the shape of awareness itself.
I now see that it's beautifull to extend awareness to all patterns and that it gives you
a notion of value all around you. For me the notion of value_all_around_me came with
the realisation that everything is built out of other patterns that are built out of other
patterns etc. and that every 'level' gains something (Q) that's not yet present in the parts below.
(Pirsig used his motorcycle as a great example)
I still think though that the the above descibed awareness is different from the awareness
that arose with the evolutionary forming of brains, which made memories
possible and subsequently also 'awareness' of f.e.living. Maybe it's better to say *extended*,
to emphasize the link there is between the two forms of awareness.
I was glad with the post of Dave in which he summes up the paradoxal quotes from Pirsig.
I feel we still haven't got agreement on the idealism/realism thing and where Pirsig stands.
I'm glad for Roger, he's free of any charges again (great post David!), but is Pirsig? Or is
this not interesting enough because it doesn't really matter for a good discussion.
I've got the feeling Pirsig avoids the subject out of pragmatic reasons. I am interested in the
outcome of this discussion (we should change the subject line though).
I wrote:
> Although I think he's a pragmatic realist he could also be a pragmatic idealist.
Dave responded:
> >....both the "law of gravity" and "gravity" are
> >intellectual static patterns, but gravity (when you take
> >the quotation marks off) is said, in a very high quality
> >interpretation of experience, to be an external reality."
> (Correspondence from Pirsig to McWatt)
And concluded that Pirsig is a Pragmatic realist, not idealist
Reading closely I remark though that Pirsig writes 'said to be an
external reality'
After the next Dave (and so am I) is not so sure anymore about the realism.
> >Among these patterns is the intellectual pattern that says
> >"there is an external world of things out there which are
> >independent of intellectual patterns".
> >
> >That is one of the highest quality intellectual patterns
> >there is. And in this highest quality intellectual
> >pattern, external objects appear historically before
> >intellectual patterns...
Dave:
> [There is an] intellectual pattern that says "there is an external world of
> things out there which are independent of intellectual patterns". [but as
> already stated "that external world of things" is still just an intellectual
> pattern (though that external world of things is independent of intellectual
> patterns) etc. etc.]
Pirsig further
> >But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself comes
> >before the external world, not after, as is commonly presumed by the materialists.
Anyone have any thoughts on this ?
(don't forget the new subject line-maybe Dave's "Pragmatism" works good for this. Dave?)
Walter
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