From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Fri Jul 15 2005 - 09:28:55 BST
Hello Ham
hampday@earthlink.net wrote:
>>"In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms
>>respond to our environment with an invention of many
>>marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees,
>>stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy,
>>engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues
>>reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children
>>in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. ...
>>Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to
>>create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.
>>
>>"Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it
>>within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why
>>Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something
>>less than Quality itself."
>
>
> That's all very nice poetry, and I can almost hear a choir with string
> accompaniment in the background. But isn't it the challenge of philosophy
> to define reality in a logically credible fashion?
Yes
To take an esthetic human response, which is incapable of definition as a generative force, and
> posit it as the "cause of the created world" is to abandon logic for a
> phantasmagoria of word symbols.
>
I think that a 'response' thus defined, is a static pattern. Moreover, as a pattern, I
don't think that it 'generates' as you imply here.
> Let's try an approach that's less pretty syntactically but closer to logic.
>
> If quality is the "stimulus our environment puts upon us to create the
> world", then the environment is the primary cause, and we are the world's
> creators.
Actually it follows that Dynamic Quality, which is best left undefined, is the cause of our
environment and the cause of us as the worlds creators.
But what is the "environment" if not our physical reality?
Static Quality.
Thus,
> stripped of its poetry, the assertion being made here is that reality forces
> us to create reality.
Exactly. Reality(Quality) forces us to create Static Quality.
That such a tautology continues to impress Pirsig's
> followers is a tribute to the author's word mastery rather than his
> metaphysical logic. The (otherwise plausible) concept that man creates his
> own reality loses logical credibility, unless something else -- Being,
> Spirit, Energy, Consciousness, Essence? -- is posited as the primary source.
>
What about Dynamic Quality? Something which cannot be defined and implies
accessablility to anyone, is free-flowing, is open to change, and implies freedom
and warmth. Unlike Essence which to me implies inaccessability, rigidity
closedness and strictness.
> Pirsig doesn't try to develop that concept. In fact, he shuns it. As a
> consequence, there is no ontological support for the MoQ.
>
>
>>"Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented
>>by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among
>>these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are.
>
>
> Here is another example of illogical rhetoric, this time a blatantly false
> premise. Just consider that statement. Even if we accept the author's
> "analogue" that religion is some kind of "quality", there is no way that
> religion can have been invented by anything but man. Now, I expect somebody
> here to accuse me of being "too literal" in this interpretation.
Agree, if you read, or tried to understand what was being written here you would
notice these subtle references in his statement...
"Religion isn't invented by [static patterned] man. Men[statically as an
intellectual concept] are invented by[came after (logically)] religion.
Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an
understanding of what they themselves are."
Quality made religion not [static] Man.
But this
> is a philosophical discussion, for pete's sake, not a forum on poetic
> metaphor!
>
> Only in this next quote does Pirsig finally begin talking like a
> philosopher. It was the Platonic reasoning here that initially attracted me
> to the concept he was trying to theorize. And the analogy of Socrate's
> double-teamed chariot makes sense in this context:
>
>
>>"Since the One is the source of all things and
>>includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things,
>>since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always
>>describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described
>>allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and
>>speech. Socrates chooses a heaven-and-earth analogy, showing how
>>individuals are drawn toward the One by a chariot drawn by two horses."
>
>
> As for the postcript quotation which seems to have you enthralled, it is
> meaningless to me.
>
>
>>"These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind.
>>Every last bit of it."
Meaningless on its own to me too Ham.
That's all.
- David.
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