[Arlo to Platt]:
As for running from Pirsig's words, if you read Pirsig and feel that
he is proposing a Quality with a conscious volition and intent, a
Quality which formulates plans and enacts them, a Quality that orders
and controls the cosmos to its will, a Quality that ordered the
cosmos to produce "you", and sends cyclones against the Burmese
people as part of its "plan", then all you've done is turn Pirsig's
Quality into "Quali-god". Good luck with that.
[Platt to Arlo]:
All Pirsig is proposing is evolution towards greater versatility and
freedom. The other stuff you imagine is just that -- your imagination.
May I butt in here? This has been a prolonged argument, but I see now where
Platt has gone with Chance and why Arlo is resisting it.
Platt quotes Pirsig as accepting teleology in his philosophy. "Neither is
there a quarrel between the Metaphysics of Quality and the 'teleological'
theories which insist that life has some purpose." The problem, as I see
it, is that he doesn't explain what that purpose is.
Just as his aphorism "some things are better than others" cannot suffice as
a moral precept without a cognizant agent to realize it, "evolution towards
greater versatility and freedom" makes no sense as a teleology of the
universe unless it is meant to apply to the diversity of experience and the
freedom of human choice.
Pirsig's reality avoids the individual and is totally wrapped up in nature,
evolution, and social systems. He sees DQ as a fundamental principle of the
objective world, and experience as its mediator, which is a novel idea that
is beautifully developed. Indeed, he has all the propositions needed to tie
the ends together on his ontology, except the critical one -- the fact that
a
sensible agent is required to bring both Value and experience into
existence.
Having set out to overcome the S/O duality, he won't allow himself
to accept existence as an anthropocentric reality.
What is lacking here is not a teleology but ENTELECHY. In philosophy,
entelechy is that which actualizes what in essence is potentiality. The
term
relates to Aristotle's distinction between matter and form. "Everything
that
comes into existence moves towards an end. This end is the principle of
its existence; and it comes into existence for the sake of this end."
Everything in existence is binary in nature, which reflects the primary
dichotomy
known to MoQists as the "DQ/SQ split". What exists is being divided by
nothingness, objects divided by subjects, self versus otherness, life
terminated
by death -- in other words, the difference between reality and appearance.
Thus, we have the possibility of chaos with its ontogeny of Chance, or
entelechy with its teleology of Purpose. It is the value-sensibility of
free agents
(human beings) that creates experiential reality, not "the accumulated
effect
of countless spur-of-the-moment choices" [Pirsig] nor "Quality that orders
and controls the cosmos to its will."
Essentially yours,
Ham
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