From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 12 2004 - 17:32:29 BST
David M,
> You are wanting it both ways, you can't
> agree that Pirsig has a very restricted use
> for the word intellect and complain that you
> want to talk about lots of interesting stuff in
> what Pirsig calls pre-intellectual.
> The substance of the debate is what this
> pre-intellectual contains whatever we call it.
> Let's discuss this interesting stuff, the powers of DQ
> prior to the more human and social type forms that
> Pirsig calls intellectual. I think a more confident MOQ
> could use your use of the word, but I think I understand
> Pirsig's motives in terms of rhetoric. It also has an
> element of substance with respect to it being difficult
> to start talking about the capable powers that clearly
> exist prior to the 4th level, no matter what we call it.
His rhetoric, as you put it, removes the only way we can get at the
interesting stuff, if what Pirsig calls pre-intellectual is in fact
intellect writ large. Of course, a lot of spadework is required to show
this, thanks to most everyone's beliefs in naive realism (to some degree or
other) and nominalism, but it can be done. What Pirsig did was sweep the
problems of mind under the rug, which he had to do given these beliefs.
This makes his metaphysics untenable, indeed unempirical, not merely
incomplete.
The "capable powers that clearly exist prior to the 4th level" are, in my
view, the powers of the 4th level (which we have only a dim use of), which
makes the 4th level not "just another level". To deny that is more than a
bit of rhetoric. It is a metaphysical claim, and such a claim means that we
either will look in the wrong place to explicate those powers, or simply
not look at all (the supposed Zen response). So, morally speaking, we need
to resolve this debate before we can hope to move on.
- Scott
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