[Platt] Seems you believe knowledge only comes from "first hand experience."
[Arlo] No. But I've also never known anyone who has personally experienced death to tell me about it. The only thing we can say is that "loss sucks", but that is far different from "death sucks". Should those we lost find a way to tell us what death is like (better or worse), I'll be happy to accept this second-hand experience. [Platt] By asserting that pre-intellectual experience is "too obscure" for language. [Arlo] And yet that is what language is, analogies used to try to describe this. That's why its important to never forget that the best we can do is analogy, we can never "describe" it otherwise. [Platt] So I don't think your statement that "Language is the use of analogy to describe pre-intellectual experience" is correct because pre-intellectual experience can't be "described" at all. [Arlo] It can be with analogy, that is my point, and Pirsig's. We invent analogies to "understand" (Pirsig's quotes) pre-intellectual experience. [Platt] It would be like trying to describe the smell of bacon or the sound of whipoorwill. [Arlo] And yet that is what language is. We can never do it, but we try. My take on the Lila quote you provided is that it is supportive but not contradictory to the ZMM quote. Of course Quality is before language, can not be contained by language, that is why in ZMM Pirsig wrote "all this is just an analogy". Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
