Robert and Squad
Thanks to Robert the unemployment rate of the squad will never be
high. After three years and a billion messages and this:
> BTW, Does Pirsig ever address dualism?
He does nothing BUT address dualism. He has even created a new one:
Dynamic/Static dualism instead of Subject/Object dualism.
Generally I agree with Rich Pretti (if I only knew what his 'ego'
is): Emotions are social (in my "strong" interpretation they are
the very social level itself, but let that rest).
Robert cites William James:
> "What kind of emotion of fear would be left if the feeling
> neither quickened the heart beats nor of shallow breathing,
> neither of trembling lips nor of awakened limbs, neither of
> goose flesh nor of visual stirrings, were present, it is
> quite impossible for me to think."
What James describes is biology seen from his Intellect -
distorted by his society! See it this way: The biological repertoire
is exceedingly simple when it comes to alert an organism to make it
ready for fight or flight. A few chemical compounds (adrenalin
mostly) have these effects (quickened heartbeat etc). A frog, for
instance, goes through this phase thousand times a day and would have
been a nervous wreck if it had the emotional quality that James
indicates. From its biological "point of view" it's not the sickening
feeling of "fear", merely alertness.
No, at the biological level the reaction is merely "sensation" (this
goes if the organism is an amoeba or a human being), but at the
human level, biology has been overlaid with an emotional layer and
that with an Intellectual layer, The adrenalin "shot" is highly
modified and has attained an emotional quality (I believe this goes
to a certain degree for the primates too).
The strength of the MOQ is that these phenomena
(sensation/emotion/reason) for the first time EVER are harmonized
with experience. And (paraphrasing R.Feynman) Mr Stillwell, you must
be joking when writing:
> The more I think about these things, the more dualism makes
> sense (but not the religious beliefs tagged to dualism).
> There is an external world, which we infer from our
> experiences, and there are points of perception to the
> external world (consciousness).
I thought those who came to the MOQ were frustrated with the
impossibilities of the SOM and in Pirsig's ideas saw a relief, but
again and again it is shown that very few grasp what the farewell
with subject-object metaphysics signifies. It's not merely a
modification, it's REVOLUTION!
> Reality is fundamentally dual -- not four levels.
If this is your complaint, Robert, no problem. This is the tenet of
the MOQ too. Dynamic Quality/Static Quality (of which four levels can
be identified).
Bo
["Quality isn't IN the eye of the beholder.
Quality IS the eye of the beholder".
(Platt Holden)]
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
