From: Joseph Maurer (jhmau@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Tue Feb 15 2005 - 18:25:07 GMT
On Saturday 12 February 2005 8:14 PM Scott writes to Ron:
[Scott] Of course one can't actually know anything without reasoning about
what is sensed. I thought that was understood, given Pirsig's statement of
traditional empiricism as "reasoning about what the senses provide". The
thing I object to is what follows, that "empiricism" be extended to cover
our artistic, moral, and religious experience. And, just to be safe, I
repeat that this does not imply that I consider that we can't know anything
about art, morals, and religion. Just that it serves no purpose to extend
the word "empirical" to cover them, and causes confusion if we do.
Hi Scott and Ron and all,
The example of the president that Pirsig uses to show that Quality in the
MOQ 'social and intellectual levels' is 'subjective' seems to apply to what
you are discussing. IMO it is an apt example to show the necessity of
expanding the word 'empirical' to the direct experience of social order.
IMO Direct experience can be expressed in a logical, analogical, or
metaphorical way. Logic is defined. Analogy is undefined. Metaphor is
defined-undefined. As order the metaphorical is defined in the social level,
He is president. Metaphors in the other levels are undefined, He is
beautiful.
About our direct experience of the social level I would follow the guidance
of caution proposed by George Gurdjieff:
"My Dear and kind Grandfather, be so kind as to explain to me, if only in a
general way, why those beings there are such that they take the 'ephemeral'
for the 'real'.
To this question of his grandson, Beelzebub replied thus:
It was only during later periods that the three-brained beings of the planet
Earth began to have this particularity in their psyche, and just this
particularity arose in them only because their predominant part, which was
formed in them as in all three-brained beings, gradually allowed other parts
of their total presences to perceive every new impression without what is
called 'being-Partkdolg-duty', but just merely as, in general, such
impressions are perceived by the separate independent localizations existing
under the name of being-centers present in the three-brained beings, or, as
I should say in their language, they believe everything anybody says, and
not solely that which they themselves have been able to recognize by their
own sane deliberations.
" In general, any new understanding is crystallized in the presence of these
strange beings only if Smith speaks of somebody or something in a certain
way; and then if Brown says the same, the hearer is quite convinced it is
just so and couldn't possibly be otherwise............" Chapter 13: "Why
in man's reason fantasy may be perceived as reality", Beelzebub's Tales to
His Grandson.
Joe
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