RE: MD Awareness and Quality

From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Feb 02 2004 - 14:16:40 GMT

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    Steve, Matt

    Matt said:
    Caveat 2) I think Pirsig does want to say in one sense that "all
    patterns are intellectual." I'm thinking of his LC note 97 in which he
    says, "It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that
    although 'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature came first,
    actually 'common sense' which is A SET OF IDEAS, has to come first. This
    'common sense' is arrived at through a web of SOCIALLY APPROVED
    EVALUATIONS of various alternatives. The key term here is 'evaluation',
    i.e. quality decisions. The fundamental reality is not the common sense
    or the objects and laws approved of by common sense but the approval
    itself and the quality that leads to it." I think Pirsig is here saying
    that all of our knowledge is intellectual patterns. That being so, the
    MoQ and its talk of "patterns" is an intellectual pattern. This makes,
    in one sense, all patterns intellectual. However, in another sense, all
    patterns aren't intellectual as Pirsig notes when he goes on to talk
    about the fundamental reality in the last line.

    Paul:
    I agree with Matt that "in one sense, all patterns are intellectual."
    That is, in the sense that we can describe experience in terms of levels
    and patterns we must first have converted that experience into symbols
    of some kind which stand for that experience. Only then can that
    experience be intellectually constructed into explanations of
    experience. Pirsig says this many times in ZMM and Lila e.g. "[Value] is
    the primary empirical reality from which such things as stoves and heat
    and oaths and self are later intellectually constructed." [Lila p.76]

    That does not mean, as an idealist metaphysics would have it, that
    intellect creates experience, rather that experience creates intellect.
    Experience is categorised by intellect and levels are categories.

    Regards

    Paul

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