Anders Nielsen (joshu@diku.dk)
Sat, 18 Oct 1997 06:03:34 +0100
[...]
> > Sounds like Pirsig has contradicted himself. If the sense of value
> > resides at the biological level and only living beings can perceive
> > dynamic quality, how did the inorganic patterns ever evolve into
> > biological ones?
>
> It is interesting that you see this as a contradiction. Jason and I
> have found others too. We are trying to understand what is happening
> here. Could it be that this is an issue of context instead of
> contradiction?
>
> If we could put ourselves in the great author's context at the moment he
> made these apparently contradictory statements we would probably see
> that they are not contradictory within the MoQ. Since he did not
> establish context every time he moved to a new one (this would be very
> difficult to do for the author and unnerving for the reader), sometimes
> it is difficult for us to move easily with him.
>
> Have you noticed that when you read the whole thing contiguously these
> apparent contradictions do not glare back at you? They seem more
> prominent when we quote small segments of his work.
Let's try not to get religious about it, shall we?
We can't very well discuss anything, if you are willing to accept
contradictions in the text.
It's not like we're at a bible-study session down at the local Jehova's
witnesses.
But we do have an advantage that Moses didn't have when he had to explain
the 10 commandments...We can go to the source and ask questions, so
how about we write up a letter pointing out the contradictions we seem to
have stuck upon, and giving big P (or "the great author" as you people insist
on calling him) a chance to elaborate on what he meant?
But in any event, if you feel that the multiple-contexts idea explains
big P's (seemingly) contradictory statements, please explain this.
Set up the relevant contexts, etc. (this might be a bit of a task though)
--
======= Anders Nielsen, joshu@diku.dk ========
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't
got the guts to bite people themselves.
- Strindberg
--
post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk
unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com
homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:05 CEST