From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Oct 28 2005 - 07:07:19 BST
Hello David --
For the life of me, I really can't tell whether your persistence is an
attempt to bate me or a genuine plea for answers. In any case, I will again
try to answer those questions which seem meaningful relative to my
philosophy. You'll have to forgive me for not elaborating at length on
questions that take us nowhere.
> 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.
Cultural products? This sounds like some kind of merchandizing plan. What
are the "religious values" you concede to the MoQ? Do we pick and choose
religious values to fit a philosophy? I think not. To me the value of
religion is its spirituality, and I think Essentialism is capable of filling
this need to some extent -- certainly more than the MoQ. But even the
Taoists believe in a "soul", do they not? Pirsigians apparently don't
believe in the individual self, let alone a soul. Frankly, I can't see how
any kind of spirituality is adaptable to a philosophy that rejects
individualism. Maybe you can explain it.
You asked me for a good reason to change your belief about reality, and I
provided one: restoring the self to its proper place in existence.
Apparently this was incomprehensible to you.
> 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.
Well, your response is incomprehensible to me, so I guess we're even!
> 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.
I get this all the time from you people. It's the notion that there's no
"you" without experience. That's what I mean by the MoQ rejecting the
self -- along with its sensibility, consciousness, intellect, and wants.
You "externalize" all of these attributes in order to get rid of selfness
for reasons I can't fathom. What is it about proprietary awareness that you
can't accept as real? Is there no "you" or "me"; are we all illusions or
simply the collective sentience of nature? You say that I complicate
things, while Pirsig "offers a less problematic set of assumptions that
makes them good to me." Is the MoQ idea of no self "less problematic" than
self-consciousness? How in the world do you account for your own self?
> To talk of subjects and objects is to unrelate the unity of experience.[?]
What in heaven's name is the unity of experience? Did you mean to say
"reality"? If so, you're right. We do it all the time. It's called
"existence".
> The subject is an abstraction that we do not experience.
>
> Try me, you describe experience to me.
I experience myself empirically; I usually identify my physical body with
it. I am aware of pain, joy and desire, as well as images and thoughts of
otherness; they are my most intimate and self-defining feelings. How can my
subjectivity be an abstraction? The fact that my cognitive self is not a
"substance" doesn't mean it has no existence. That's Pirsigian foolishness.
You asked me about gnosticism, which I explained as a pre-scientific
appproach to knowledge, concluding with:
> The problem with scientism is that it can only deal with
> physical reality, and therefore cannot draw inferences
> about non-physical (transcendental) concepts.
You replied:
> Fine but how does that apply to Pirsig's MOQ?
I don't think gnosticism applies to the MoQ, unless you regard the notion of
Quality as an intuitive concept. Pirsig's metaphysics is non-materialistic,
but he does not identify DQ as the primary source (Creator). Hence, the MoQ
is not a transcendental philosophy. Is that what you are asking?
> SO you have not read his Process and Reality.
I have a small paperback by Whitehead titled "The Aims of Education", but
I've also read quotations and analyses of his major works. Neither
Whitehead nor his contemporary Bertrand Russell hold much interest for me.
Basically they're both logical positivists.
> You seem to take my answers out of context, try looking back.
I'll skip this because I don't know what you're referring to.
I had said:
> Since nothing comes from nothing
> (ex nihilo), the source cannot be nothing.
To which you responded:
SO only things can be the source of things?!
That's not what I said. Things are objects or events experienced in the
relational world of time and space. Essence is not a "thing"; it is the
undifferentiated source of all experience.
> I see philosophy more in terms of poetry, a enlightening descrition of
> reality-experience.
That explains your lack of metaphysical insight. I suspect that Pirsig
considered himself more of a poet than a philosopher. (Providing, of
course, that he had a "self" to consider :-)
I said:
> Anything can be called "mystical", "quality", or "intellect";
> but it's not a philosophy without a logical thesis to support it.
You said:
> Give me an example of such a thesis.
We've already mentioned Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Heidegger's
"Being and Time". What about Platonism, Cartesianism, Kantianism,
Hegelianism and Vitalism, for starters? It seems to me they all had fairly
well developed metaphysical ontologies.
> The self, do we need it? For a while perhaps. For ever? Not so sure.
What would we do without it?
Nothing exists forever. Did I ever say the self was immortal?
(At least I accept it as an existential reality.)
Best wishes,
Ham
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