From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 01:33:58 GMT
Hey DMB, Matt, Matt, and all,
> Matt the EE said:
> I think Pirsig's fundamental move is to redescribe reality, not in terms
of
> material or ideas, but in terms of value. Technically, there is no
> material in the MoQ. There are only inorganic patterns of value. We
> formally thought of these things as material objects, but the
redescription
> does away with that.
> DMB says:
> While its true that matter or substance is re-described in the MOQ as
> inorganic patterns of values, I don't think we can go so far as to say the
> MOQ denies the existence of material. Pirsig's attack is upon a
METAPHYSICS
> of substance, not substance itself. He's trying to overthrow scientific
> materialism, the stance that objective physical reality is the bedrock of
> the world.
RICK
Actually David, I think Matt is correct on this point when he says,
"Technically, there is no material in the MoQ." I base that assessment on
the following passage...
PIRSIG (LILA ch8, p120)
The next platypus to fall is "substance." Like "causation," "substance" is
a derived concept, not anything that is directly experienced. No one has
ever seen substance and no one ever will. All people ever see is data. It
is assumed that what makes the data hang together in consistent patterns is
that they inhere in this "substance." But as John Locke pointed out in the
seventeenth century, if we ask what this substance is, devoid of any
properties, we find ourselves thinking of nothing whatsoever. The data of
quantum physics indicate that what are called "subatomic particles" cannot
possibly fill the definition of a substance. The properties exist then
disappear, then exist, and then disappear again in these little bundles
called "quanta." These bundles are not continuous in time, yet an
essential, defined characteristic of "substance" is that it *is* continuous
in time. Since the quantum bundles are not substance and since it is a
usual scientific assumption that these subatomic particles compose
everything there is, then it follows that THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE IN THE WORLD
NOR HAS THERE EVER BEEN (emphasis added). The whole concept is a grand
metaphysical illusion.
RICK
I think that this paragraph makes it pretty explicit that Pirsig completely
denies the existence of anything called "substance".... No?
take care,
rick
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