From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sat Nov 08 2003 - 16:32:39 GMT
So do I feel like an intellectual pattern?
Well sometimes. When I read a difficult
book, I get alot more out of it because
of the 300 books I have read before it
than I would have done when I was 18
and read very few. What I experience now is
very dependent on what I have experienced
before. But equally what I experience now may
alter something I have already experienced so that
it becomes something different in my memory and
in the way it effects me now. You can't cut stop
this circle turning, and you can't stop DQ and SQ
pouring into each other. A sense of self has to have
something to do with this 'intensifying' of experience that
occurs each second that you accummulate more experience.
Of course, it should not be forgotten how prepared we are
to experience when we are born, and how ready we are to do
certain things like acquire whatever language we are born into.
How intensely pre-cultured our experience is, if we take being
a body to be a very loaded sort of thing.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott R" < >
To: < >
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 6:38 PM
Subject: Re: MD Self-consciousness
> Platt,
>
> > > The MOQ does not account for the sense of self. Illusory it may be,
but
> > > whence the illusion?
> >
> > Pirsig makes it clear that the "self" in the MOQ is an intellectual
> > pattern, not an illusion:
>
> Do you feel like you are an intellectual pattern? I don't. To me,
> intellectual patterns are things like "E=mc[squared]", or "the self is (or
> is not) an illusion". To call the self an intellectual pattern is in the
> same mold as materialists like Rorty and Dennett, who look on the self as
a
> figure in a narrative. Such claims simply do not fit my experience. In my
> experience, the self is that which thinks intellectual patterns, which
> feels, etc., that it is different from all that is thought, or felt, or
> perceived. In short, it is not SQ alone. (I mention that it may be
illusory,
> in that the word "that" in the second to last sentence does not act in the
> same way as, for example, its use in "that which lights up the sky". The
> latter use has a sensory referent (the sun), while its use in "that which
> thinks" does not, so the "may be illusory" refers to the fact that the
self
> has no ostensive definition. That does not make it an intellectual
pattern,
> however.)
>
> > . From Lila, chp 5:
> > "But that the quality is low is absolutely certain. It is the primary
> > empirical reality from which such things as stoves and heat and oaths
> > and SELF are later intellectually constructed."
>
> Do you recall ever intellectually constructing the self? I don't. Of
course
> I don't recall intellectually constructing the meanings of most of the
words
> I use, but I am just pointing out that because the self is not an object
of
> sensory perception does not imply that it is not "primary empirical
> reality". This quote is a clear example showing that Pirsig presupposes a
> nominalist viewpoint.
>
> >
> > Whence the intellectual construction of self? Like the origin of all
> > constructions in the MOQ, from Dynamic Quality.
>
> Why not entertain the possibility that the self is DQ? It appears to
create
> SQ (one thinks new thoughts), and is just as undefinable as DQ, and thus
> that possibility is more logically coherent and empirically adequate than
> the MOQ.
>
> - Scott
>
>
>
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