From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Oct 05 2005 - 06:37:52 BST
Hi Rebecca --
> It seems to me that if we're looking at Metaphysics,
> a good place to begin might be with the guy who 'invented'
> it... Aristotle. Thinking as an activity is probably not a
> useful distinction ...
> Aristotle makes Rationality the defining line between
> humans and other animals. Rational, being the ability to
> grasp universal concepts (God, triangle, Justice... etc).
> Perhaps this is the intellectual level we're looking for?
Good point, Rebecca. But it will unfortunately be dismissed by the MD group
because, as Bo Skutvik reminds us, "Pirsig has rejected the 'thinking'
intellect." Remarkably, the MoQ does not recognize consciousness,
awareness, or intellect as a proprietary attribute of the human being. And
Aristotle, who defined rationality as "the essence of man", has been
relegated to the scrap heap of Greek Idealism to be superceded by a
philosophy of patterns and levels.
If you follow the doctrine, you'll soon become convinced that there is no
"self" with an inside view of reality, that everything worth explaining is
"outside" of individual awareness. The only bit of man remaining is what
they call "experience"; but even this is regarded as mainly a "group
activity" that draws upon the socio-cultural Intellect for its ideas and
concepts. That this idea has a parallel in Eastern mysticism appeals to the
MoQers because of its atheistic foundation. And, because "selfness" and
"consciousness" are anathema to scientists, doing away with these
proprietary functions seems more appropriate for our postmodern nihilistic
culture.
Bo is waging an uphill battle to restore intellect to its proper place in
the "thinking person", but he's caught in the web of patterns that was
designed to conquer subject-object duality (SOM). Philosophers since
Aristotle have considered the elimination of duality the Holy Grail of
metaphysics. Yet, without it there could be no thinking subjects with a
multiplicity of objects to think about.
I've concluded that it's not possible to redefine the MoQ in this way. You
either accept it as it is or reject it and start afresh. I was unaware of
Pirsig when I developed my philosophy of Essence, but was drawn to the
concept of Quality or Value as an aesthetic alternative to materialism. I
came upon the MoQ site while researching Value for my thesis, and decided to
query the author. You might be interested in the comments he dashed off in
a brief reply in July, 2004. I obtained permission to post his note through
Horse, but that was more than a year ago, and other newcomers may not have
seen it.
"Dear Hamilton Priday,
I looked at your thesis on the internet and saw that it is
thoughtful, sane, and remarkably similar to the Metaphysics of Quality. My
problem with "essence", is not that it isn't there or that it is not the
same as Quality. It is that positivists usually deny "essence" as something
like "God" or "the absolute" and dismiss it [as] experimentally
unverifiable,
which is to say they think you are some kind of religious nut. The advantage
of Quality is that it cannot be dismissed as unverifiable without falling
into absurdity. The positivist cannot say, for example, that his experiments
have no value, or that he does not think that anything is better, or worse,
that is, of more or less value, than anything else.
I'm getting quite old now and more interested in sailing than
philosophy these days, but I think you might get some interesting comments
from the contributors to www.moq.org in the Discuss section of that web
site.
Best regards,
RMPirsig"
(I won't comment, except to say that you can plainly see why he chose not to
follow my approach.)
Essentially yours,
Ham
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
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