From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 17 2004 - 07:54:43 BST
Hello everyone
>From: "Scott Roberts" <jse885@earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: RE: MD Plotinus, Pirsig and Wilber
>Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 13:03:02 -0600
>
>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.
Hi Scott
I can't speak for all Buddhists but I do know from my own experience that
meditation isn't supposed to "work" nor does it. There is no realization
involved in meditation. There is no reason behind meditation; there is no
goal to achieve. A person doesn't have to keep seated on a cushion in order
to meditate; one can be walking down the street or driving a car or working
on a motorcycle or talking to someone. There is nothing to "figure out."
Right meditation isn't an intellectual exercise.
On Buddhist Nothingness: there is no Buddhist conception of nothingness. It
cannot be discerned through reason for there is no concept to discern. If
you conceptualize nothingness it is no longer nothingness. It becomes
something, a concept of nothingness but not nothingness. It has no opposite
in being or existence. Yet nothingness isn't empty. There is great working
in nothingness.
>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.)
I didn't say an atom "values" nor am I aware of Robert Pirsig saying so.
That would indicate awareness. I believe "preference" is the term he uses.
>
>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.
How exactly is Mark's quote a direct contradiction to Plotinus?
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
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