Hi Glove, Dave,
You're right Dave, I made you answer to your own post. Somehow we both
don't know how to begin discussing the quotes from Pirsig. I hoped you would
explain more about how you see pragmatism into this issue.
Glove subscribed to our difficulties with the quotes, but sees an opening
in the 'locked' circle by placing time on the intellectual side in stead of
the external reality side.
>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.]
>Glove:
>This circle is easy to get locked into if time is considered as a principle
>of an independently existing external reality. What I sense Pirsig is
>getting at in his quotes is that the intellect level is not bounded by our
>linear sense of time. Time is not a principle, rather it is a conceptual
>agreement.
I don't believe time is a conceptual agreement, but even if it is, wouldn't the
problem still remain? And furthermore, you state that the intellect level is
not bounded by a linear sense of time, but is the conceptual agreement
of time not part of this intellectual level?
I don't know Glove and Dave, I want to try it an other way (I translated this so
sorry if the words are somewhat croocked)
1) Realism
- Metaphysical Realism states that that is a world out there that is independent
of the human consciousness.
- Epistemological realism (mostly connected to the metaphysical part) states
that there is an external realility that can be 'known' to human consciousness,
independent of the existence or nature of this consciousness.
2) Idealism
The view that only fundamental idea's form our reality.
As I see it Idealism excludes Realism but Realism doesn't exclude Realism in
the sense that the patterns within human consciousness itself can also be part
of reality. Probably many Realists didn't go that far.
There is however one piece of the epistemological definition of Realism that doesn't
coincide with the MoQ and maybe that's what Pirsig wanted to get through.
Of course external reality can never be known to human consciousness *independent*
of the nature of this consciousness. Reality known to the human consciousness is
'influenced' by the very structure that accounts for this consciousness and in that sense
the reality known to the human consciousness, although external, always comes after
the intellectual patterns formed.
Pirsig
> > >But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself comes
> > >before the external world, not after, as is commonly presumed by the materialists.
Grtngs
Walter
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