Ron, Marsha, Bo [Chris mentioned] --
[Ham, previously]:
Tell me, Marsha: Does Pirsig acknowledge DQ as the primary source? IS
there a primary source in the MoQ? If you can't
answer this affirmatively, then I would submit to you that the
Quality hierarchy has no fundamental reality and is merely a
paradigm for experiential existence.
[Ron]:
An accurate assessment.
[Marsha]:
RMP states that Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable.
Quality is beyond conceptualization. I think it would be safe to state
that experience is the
primary source of patterns.
But the experience (of patterns) doesn't qualify as the source (of reality).
You've got to have patterns before you can experience them. Where do they
come from? I'm not asking you for definitions. But unless the capacity to
experience (i.e., sensibility or consciousness) is primary, and is what
Pirsig really meant by Quality, your answer confirms my assertion that the
MoQ has no essential foundation.
[Bo]:
At times you make sense in the sense of writing in a way
that makes sense. You must be from an age close to mine,
born in the thirties.
Thank you (I think). I was born in 1931, which makes me old enough to have
witnessed a glocal war and the displacement of spirituality by
existentialism which is objectivist nihilism.
Do you agree that we - the Western culture at least - live in a
mind-matter split existence? That is the point of departure for
the MOQ. ...
Absolutely. The S/O duality is not a philosophy. It is our experiential
reality.
Or perhaps I should start with the even more fundamental
question: Do you agree with Pirsig's opening move that there exists no
human beings without a notion of how existence is ordered ... before
spoiling it by making metaphysics the Aristotelian kind of "a theory
about an
already theory/reality-divided existence"?
The ordering of the physical universe, including its moral values, is the
work of man's intellect, not the primary source. I do not blame Aristotle
for taking an
SOM approach to knowledge. Indeed, the systemization and classification of
objective knowledge is not only beneficial to man but is the most effective
methodology we have for understanding relational (i.e., physical) phenomena.
But Science is not Philosophy; it is based on empirical data derived from
and limited by human experience. Ultimate reality is "meta-physical", which
means that it transcends experience and is indefinable in empirical terms
and principles.
You and Ron seem to understand my metaphysical approach, for which I am
grateful. I'm also encouraged by your postscript "That's all for a start".
If we can continue in this fundamental vein, it may even be possible to
"make (some) sense" of what Christoffer started on 9/12 as The Quest for
Quality.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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