From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Aug 16 2004 - 20:03:02 BST
Dan (with reference to post from MSH in a different thread),
> Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality
succeeds
> where Bradley’s Absolute and Hegel’s Being and the Buddhist Nothingness
and
> the Hindu Oneness and the theists’ God and Allah and you-name-it; all of
> them fail. For quality, no faith is required because there is no way you
> can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality. You cannot
conceive
> of or live in a world in which nothing is better than anything else.
> (Robert Pirsig)
I would attack this statement from two sides, though restricting it to the
claim that Buddhist Nothingness requires faith (and let Bradley et al take
care of their own). Nothingness is discerned through reason, in that a
logical investigation of concepts of self-inherent existence show those
concepts to be empty. Where a Buddhist requires faith is not to figure this
out, but to keep himself seated on the meditation cushion to Realize this,
that meditation works. On the other side, yes, we cannot conceive of or
live in a world in which nothing is better than anything else, but that --
as empirical judgment -- only applies to us. Does it apply to atoms? True,
it makes as much sense to say that "B values precondition A" as "A cause
B", in that no science changes, but are we justified, other than by faith,
to say that an atom "values"? (N.B., I don't think of this as a serious
criticism of the MOQ, in that I think the value of the MOQ does not crash
and burn if this question is left open.)
Thanks for the digging up the defnition of process philosophy, though it
doesn't help me much in getting at similarities and differences. I would
need to find out Whitehead's notions of what drives change, and so forth,
but that's for another time.
Meanwhile, on differences between Pirsig and Plotinus, consider this (from
Ant via MSH):
BEGIN MCWATT
[Pirsig] disagrees that evolutionary theory must be supplemented by a
teleological account (supernatural or otherwise).
The MOQ does not say that intellectual patterns guide the supremacy
of life over inanimate nature. On the contrary the MOQ says that at
the time life triumphed over inanimate nature there were no
intellectual patterns. (Pirsig 2004b)
As noted above, Pirsig suggests instead that evolution occurred due
to ‘spur of the moment decisions’ based on Dynamic Quality i.e.
undefined betterness.
END MCWATT
This is, of course, in direct contradiction to Plotinus, and most all
pre-SOM philosophers, the difference that I call top-down vs. bottom-up.
Further, it is not just a difference, but comes at such a fundamental level
that any similarities are relatively minor.
I'll add that I am more a Plotinian than a MOQist, since I don't think
there can be a coherent explanation of how life does emerge from the
inorganic, nor how conscious can emerge. Of course, the Plotinian has the
opposite challenge of explaining how the intellect can materialize, but I
don't see any logical impossibility involved, whereas I do with the problem
of conscious emergence. (Our perceptions are extended -- have
spatio-temporality, but if they are perceptions *of* the extended, passed
to us by tiny signals (photons, etc.) then there is nothing spatio-temporal
that can grasp the extended whole as a whole, since every event (e.g. an
electron absorbing a photon, a nerve cell firing) is separated from every
other event. So it makes more sense to say that space and time are products
of perception, that is, consciousness is what makes the material (the
spatio-temporal) material).
- Scott
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Aug 16 2004 - 21:57:45 BST