From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Nov 28 2004 - 15:34:52 GMT
Platt,
> > Godel didn't show it as being contradictory, only incomplete.
>
> Godel showed it as being contradictory in proving there's no such thing
as
> proof.
Well, no. It proves that there exist arithmetical statements that are true
but unprovable, which means that arithmetic is incomplete. But there are an
infinite number of provable arithmetic statements, such as "2+2=4" and
"there is no greatest prime number." Godel's Theorem does not change their
provability in the slightest.
> Awareness is ineffable. But for the sake of description it consists of
> both change and permanence simultaneously, the same as Pirsig's division
> of Quality into Dynamic and static. He says as you do that you can't have
> one without the other--both are needed.
But he falls off the Middle Way when he says: "the mystical goal is to
experience pure DQ by putting all SQ to sleep". [Ch. 30] My position is
that there is no "pure DQ".
> "Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
> abstractions.Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the
> sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none
of
> these things."(Lila, 5) Pirsig then goes on, for the purpose of
> intellectualizing, to divide Quality into DQ and SQ instead of Subjects
> and Objects. Perhaps it's unfortunate, but thinking (which is necessary
> for our survival) requires that we break up awareness and rearrange it
> into manageable patterns of meaning.
I argue that Quality breaks up things to create things. Intellect does as
well. To abstract is a creative act. Yet Pirsig continually treats
intellect as something negative with respect to Quality, as in the above.
- Scott
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