From: David Morey (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 03 2004 - 11:00:24 GMT
Hi Ham
Once again you mistake Pirsig for a materialist empiricist,
he is not. Experience=quality=real. It is full of SQ patterns
that appear on 4 levels inorganic, organic, social, intellectual.
Only 2 of these levels could be seen as material but that would
be a return to SOM.
He is placing to one side a dualist approach that gives us
idealist-subjectivity and material-objects. He is closer to you
than you realise, perhaps ahead of you. Go read Heidegger to
understand that you cannot posit the subjective nature of being
as foundational because subjectivity only exists in an subject-object
dualism.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: < >
To: < >
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 7:24 AM
Subject: *** SPAM *** Re: MD Where does quality reside?
>
> From: Ham Priday
> To: Platt Holden and Mark Steven Heyman
> Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 2:15 AM
> Subject: MD Where does quality reside?
>
>
> Platt quotes Pirsig, as follows:
>> "Biological evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic
>> forces at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge
>> static
>> inorganic forces at a superatomic level. They do this by selecting
>> superatomic mechanisms in which a number of options are so evenly
>> balanced
>> that a weak Dynamic force can tip the balance one way or another. The
>> particular atom that the weak Dynamic subatomic forces have seized as
>> their primary vehicle is carbon.
>>
>> "What the Dynamic force had to invent in order to move up the molecular
>> level and stay there was a carbon molecule that would preserve its
>> limited
>> Dynamic freedom from inorganic laws and at the same time resist
>> deterioration back to simple compounds of carbon again. A study of nature
>> shows the Dynamic force was not able to do this but got around the
>> problem
>> by inventing two molecules: a static molecule able to resist abrasion,
>> heat, chemical attack and the like; and a Dynamic one, able to preserve
>> the subatomic indeterminacy at a molecular level and "try everything" in
>> the ways of chemical combination."
>>
>> You may if you wish consider Pirsig's description so much poetic license
>> and thus not the way it actually happened. If so, the MOQ would be just
>> another bedtime story.
>
> Yes, it is "poetic license". It is also the resort of a philosopher whose
> theory otherwise defies reason.
>
> We imagine that existential reality could be chaotic randomness. But by
> any
> empirical standard it is not. In a space/time sense, existence is the
> ground of our "beingness"; therefore its dynamics must support individual
> cognizance through a process that we call "evolution". The empiricists
> with
> no belief in a primary source can only explain the purposiveness of Nature
> as an innate force of substance. Thus, they try to present to us the idea
> that "dynamic forces at a subatomic level discover [invent?] stratagems
> for
> overcoming huge static inorganic forces at a superatomic level." This is
> nonsense, of course, for intellect is subjective and does not exist in
> atoms
> or molecules at any "level".
>
> I credit empiricists like Pirsig who realize that the Nature embodies a
> teleological principle. But the theory that "dynamic force" (i.e.,
> teleological purpose) resides in matter is a myth. An empirical ontology
> must account for the creation of intelligent life on the foundation of
> inert substance. Any other explanation is seen as "creationism" -- the
> dreaded ideology that puts the empiricists in league with religion. So
> their solution is to impute "intellect" to matter. This not only goes
> against the grain of common sense; it is illogical and metaphysically
> unsupportable.
>
> The truth is so transparently obvious, it's a wonder that they can avoid
> it.
> Pirsig and the empiricists say that matter must possess an intellectual
> component so that the sentient individual may exist. This reverses the
> concept of a subjective reality. Creation is the finite individuation of
> Essence. The principle involved here is that the subject exists so that
> it
> may experience the value of its object. Existence does not support us; we
> support existence by experiencing an "other" that represents the Essence
> lost to us at creation. All the complex and wondrous attributes we apply
> to
> existence are no more than our valuistic intellection of Essence. How
> simple this ontology is as a concept; yet how difficult it is to express
> empirically!
>
> I envy the Eastern philosophers who rely on meditation rather than
> dialectic
> to reveal the truth of their belief systems. Granting "purposiveness" to
> Quality as an alternative to granting divinity to Man simply doesn't work
> as
> a metaphysical thesis. Perhaps we need to replace empiricism with a new
> epistemology in Western culture, since we seem incapable of communicating
> such transcendental ideas in any meaningful or conclusive language.
>
> Essentially yours,
> Ham
>
>
>
>
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