dmb says: Right. Apparently, Squonk feels stifled by the facts and reason cramps his "artistic" style. Introducing either into the discussion is seen as oppressive. This naturally raises a key question; why does Krimel hate freedom so much? Just kidding. Yes, absurd is the word for it.
[Krimel] I know you are kidding but I don't think Squonk is alone in this. I don't hate freedom but I am suspicious of its delicious allure. I suspect there is a gap between the perception of or belief in freedom and actually being free. But I see no distinction whatever between fiction and a philosophy without roots in either fact or reason. To quote Tony Stark out of context, "I say, is it too much to ask for both?" dmb says: I wouldn't defend Squonk's experiment or his take on the MOQ but I'd say your understanding of "betterness" could be better. On the first point, I don't think Pirsig makes any claims about discerning "betterness" in the future. It is simply a sense of rightness and wrongness in the present experience. [Krimel] I think we make actually be kind of together on this at least with respect to the "sense of rightness and wrongness". I have talked about this as a sense of emotional valence or a sense of senses. It is nonverbal. I would argue though that this is not some vague sense of we know not what/impossible to study or fathom pre-intellectual fantasy. Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink looks at this in depth with examples from tennis to Middle East training exercises to the New Coke debacle. He cites tons of research from both the public and private sectors. Developmental psychology since the 1930's has looked directly at how infants form conceptions of the external world, how they interact with other minds and how they acquire language. This kind of stuff seems relevant to me. We know a lot about how this sense of right and wrongness works and where it comes from. It has been formally studied and been the subject of theoretical speculation since Freud. [dmb] The spur of the moment decisions made by each creature are based on the immediate situation but these choices add up to evolution. I mean, the future of the species or of the culture is never decided or discerned by any particular creature. And for the same reason, we can't rightly say evolution has a goal. I wouldn't agree with claim either, which would be a misinterpretation of Pirsig's "betterness". To use your words, stasis, balance, harmony are better than instability, imbalance and discord. To say that evolution is always driving toward these things is to agree with the essence of Pirsig's meaning. If we took semantics and bad interpretations out of the picture, I sincerely wonder if you'd be left with anything to complain about. [Krimel] I started to go off on this but why spoil the moment? This might be as close to agreement as we are likely to get. I don't think this is a good way of thinking about evolution but it is less bad than some. 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/
