From: David M (davidint@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 27 2005 - 19:40:41 BST
Hi Ham
> You say you're not latched to the MoQ, that you have some unresolved
> questions.
> Well, what are they?
DM: Nothing in common with your's I think. I think that Pirsig's
phenomenological approach to experience needs expanding to
get from DQ/SQ to the levels and an adequate theory of evolution,
as it stands it is too thin. McWatt's PhD helps. I also think that it
is possible to keep certain religious values with respect to DQ that
Pirsig deliberately avoids apart from in an Eastern Tao-like form.
But Christian's & others should be invited to understand their own
cultural products in terms of SQ & DQ.
> I think the best reason is to restore your 'self', which the MoQ either
> ignores or distributes in a collective intellectual realm of its own
> invention. Without an individual self, you have no role in the universe
> and
> no connection with the essential reality. I've been chided here for not
> attempting to work evolution into my philosophy. But what good is
> evolution
> if it does not involve you or me? Even if your mystical Quality "makes
> everything better", unless you can participate in its undifferentiated
> source you are living a meaningless existence in which everything is
> otherness to you. To me, this is the very kind of nihilism that has been
> adopted by the logical positivists whom Pirsig detests.
DM: That is too packed for me even to begin to comment meaningfully.
Let me say, the person who embraces change rather than fears it can
take comfort in their inseparability from the source of change.
>
>> How can you have subjectivity without objectivity? I say drop both.
>
> You can pretend that subject/object relations don't exist, but why reject
> the obvious? If you were not a conscious subject observing the physical
> world as an object, you would be either dead or comatose.
DM: If I put you in an isolation tank for all time as soon as you were born
would you ever attain existence? I would suggest that all the 'objects'
of my experience are inseparable from my existence.
It's one thing to
> understand that the essential source is a unity; but a meaningful
> philosophy
> must relate that unity to its experiential components.
DM To talk of subjects and objects is to unrelate the unity of experience.
It can't do this by
> denying the individual subject of experience, or by postulating that the
> conscious intellect is some mysterious glob that exists in nature.
DM: THe subject is an abstraction that we do not experience.
>
>> Pirsig starts from the problems of our current assumptions
>> and offers a less problematic set of assumptions,
>> that makes them good to me, I have no idea what your
>> reasoning is other than nonsense about logic, really!
>
> I have done the same as your illustrious author. My ontology also offers
> assumptions to replace conventional notions of reality. The fact that you
> regard them as nonsense simply indicates that you haven't taken the time
> to
> consider them. (It's always easier to accuse the outcaste of foolishness
> than to take him seriously.)
DM: Try me, you describe experience to me.
>
>> Intuitive/concepts/ideas/transcendening rational thinking/
>> experience - Hegel makes more sense!
>> Do you really think you are saying anything
>> with that sentence?
>
> Perhaps I didn't word it clearly. What I was trying to say was that
> gnosticism was the application of intuitive understanding to empirical
> knowledge. It was the basis for philosophical concepts developed prior to
> the age of enlightenment and the implementation of scientific
> investigation.
> The problem with scientism is that it can only deal with physical reality,
> and therefore cannot draw inferences about non-physical (transcendental)
> concepts.
DM: Fine but how does that apply to Pirsig's MOQ?
>
> You cite the MoQ and Whitehead's philosophy as examples of non-intuitive
> metaphysics. The quality thesis of the MoQ is certainly an intuitive
> concept, although its underlying metaphysics was left to a short
> presentation paper (SODV) by Mr. Pirsig who later rejected metaphysics
> altogether. Whitehead was a mathematician who tried to express his
> philosophy in equations based on Newtonian physics.
DM: SO you have not read his Process and Reality.
His reality was a
> "network of events" rather than a "heirachy of levels". Although both of
> these philosophies reject substance (i.e., matter), neither transcends
> relational existence.
>
>> Pirsig says his metaphysics of quality can also be called
>> One, Nothing or Tao. Link?
>
> What one chooses to "call" a philosophy -- or "link" it to -- does not
> equate with metaphysical development. This is philosophy by association,
> not the work of a true philosopher. By the same token, Quality=Reality is
> an aphorism that may make you feel good, but it is not a metaphysical
> thesis.
DM: You seem to take my answers out of context, try looking back.
>
>> Well I am calling the source Nothing, therefore
>> unlimited source becomes unlimited Nothing,
>> word play, so what? Is this not the same claim?
>
> No. You're making the same mistake as calling the quality metaphysics
> One.
> In addition, your proposition is illogical. Since nothing comes from
> nothing
> (ex nihilo), the source cannot be nothing.
DM: SO only things can be the source of things?!
All this tells me is that you
> reject the concept of a Creator. That's a conclusion you are free to
> draw,
> but it isn't what I would call an enlightened view.
>
>> Becoming as a missing aspect of our
>> ontology, Pirsig calls this DQ.
>
> Again, the word "calling". It doesn't mean anything! A philosophy is not
> something one can simply associate with a term. Its function is to
> develop
> and explain a concept by logical precepts.
DM: I see philosophy more in terms of poetry, a enlightening descrition of
reality-experience.
Anything can be called
> "mystical", "quality", or "intellect"; but it's not a philosophy without a
> logical thesis to support it.
DM: Give me an example of such a thesis.
>
>> If the source is immutable how does it get out of bed in the morning
>> to create reality?
>
> I'll leave that one to you. Thanks for expressing your "admiration" of my
> efforts.
DM: Takes energy and guts to try. My best efforts have so far been still
born, but I have plans, and the way looks interestingly untrodden.
The self, do we need it? For a while perhaps. For ever? Not so sure.
There are better persons to be attained than you or I. Let the changes
continue, ....our better half you might say.....
All the best.
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