ROGER TRIES TO CONNECT GLOVE"S RESPONSE TO STRUAN'S QUESTIONS
Struan Wrote:
I understand that the idea that Quality is presupposed and not open to
verification so will not
argue that one. I don't understand why that which is a product of Quality
seems bound to strive
towards Quality. How (and why) does something strive towards itself? That
seems to me to be rather
odd, if not downright impossible.
If all is Quality, then nothing moved away from Quality and so nothing has to
be thrust back towards
it and so we come back to the initial question of what we mean by good.
Roger:
In my opinion, the only way to resolve your "Good" question is to clarify our
terms. Pirsig's Reality is composed of Quality. He also refers to it as
morality, good, value and pure experience. This latter definition is the one
that is most illuminating in this conversation.
As Glove wrote recently:
>What it comes down to is, who is experiencing that which is experienced?
>What is it that values the experience? This question runs to the core of our
>beings. Consider that when experience ceases, so does perception. Since all
>we know of our reality is perceived, when perception ends, so does reality.
>The argument that reality still goes on after perception ends is meaningless
>to each of us as individuals. There is no way for us as individuals to know
>if this is so except by inference. This is the lesson Pirsig's Indian
>teacher seems to be teaching. This is also the lesson of Niels Bohr's
>complementarity. That which is not observed has no value.
Rog again:
I would add that Pirsig is careful to clarify that pure experience is not
secondary to a subject, it precedes and creates the subject. Experience
defines the subject and the object.
Struan, with this clarification, Pirsig's "striving experience" makes more
sense. You are right that we can hardly keep from experiencing, but our
experiences tend to be pale static patterns. We rarely embrace the full
Dynamic Experience that is reality (Or it rarely embraces us?).
Does this help at all?
All is Experience
Rog
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