From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Nov 19 2003 - 16:56:52 GMT
Hi Scott,
>> I probably should have asked this a very long time ago that I could have
>> understood your last 100 posts, but could you please explain what you mean
>> by "the logic of contradictory identity"? Where does this term come from?
> ...
>The basic idea is that the only way to handle the basic words of
> metaphysics, or religion, or psychology, is to treat them as poles in a
> polarity, or -- same thing -- in contradictory identity. Each pole depends
> totally on the other pole, and at the same time negates the other. So, for
> example, the self is and is not the non-self. DQ and SQ are, in my opinion,
> polar, or as Coleridge puts it, "two forces of one power", each determining
> the other as each negates the other.
...
> My reason for continually bringing it up in this forum is that I see
> intellect -- normal everyday human intellect -- as our most immediate
> exemplar of the L of CI. All that it produces is SQ, is finite, but the
> producing of it is DQ. Thus it is, so to speak a microcosm of DQ/SQ tension,
> and not, as Pirsig says, just SQ. So I want to scream NO when Pirsig
> characterizes DQ as "pre-intellectual", and claims that intellect takes us
> away from DQ. Instead, though it does take us away from the DQ involved in
> what we perceive with our senses, it takes us toward DQ in the intellect
> itself.
Steve:
Thanks for explaining. I pretty much agree with your last comments about
difficulty with intellect taking us away from reality, which is how I would
word the problem. I don't see a problem with thinking of intellect as
"pre-intellectual" because I think we use the term intellect differently. I
see intellect as a type of static pattern which must follow DQ as all
patterns are created by DQ. But I also bristle when Platt interprets Pirsig
to be saying that thinking takes us further from primary reality and
thinking about thinking is even further. I don't see how we could ever be
closer to or further from reality.
Regards,
Steve
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