Hi dmb, For the record, Magnus was referring to little old me (I think). I have tried to set Magnus straight. And, for the record, Quality is fixed, it's expression in terms of evolution is not. Do not confuse the two. If Quality is reality, then you are saying that Reality is not fixed. Even if Reality is everchanging, that does not mean that it is not Reality. We are talking about absolutes here. Even an ever-changing perception can be absolute in its change. That horses run can be absolute even if they all run at different speeds, or if some only run in their dreams. Perhaps not a good example, but hopefully you know what I mean.
For the record, imo, Ham adds to the discussion. I do not see it as arrogance, just opinion. And, we all have those. And if you like Magnus feels that he should protect the innocent of supposedly wrong interpretations, that is arrogant and condescending indeed. Go save a whale! Mark Ham said: Ham is referring to Pirsig's postulate that Quality equals Reality. This is inconsistent with his pronouncement that "experience is the cutting edge of reality." If Quality is fixed as a constant of the universe, it canot be modified or actualized by experience, for experience is relative to the subject 'I'. In short, experience serves no purpose in Pirsig's cosmology. Magnus replied: As always, you manage to jam so many wrongs into a paragraph that it's almost amusing, wasn't it for the fact that some new people might read it and think it's right. dmb says: Gotta agree with Magnus here. How Ham can manage to be wrong eight times in just four sentences is truly astonishing. How can you hang around here for years and not learn anything? Zip, zero, nada. Sheer tenacity, I guess. Anyway, the final scenes in ZAMM where Pirsig condemns Plato for taking the Good from the Sophists and turning it into a fixed, eternal form have a central point. And that is just as Magnus said, "Quality is not fixed". Ham has reversed the "pronouncement" too. Reality is the cutting edge of experience. Ham has reversed the order of experience with respect to subjects as well. The subject is not the source of experience, it is a product of experience, a concept derived from experience. It's all upside down and backwards in Ham's hands. That's probably where the phrase "ham-handed" comes from. Probably got his picture right there in the dictionary. What really kills me is this attitude wherein Ham is the genius and Pirsig just isn't smart enough to "get it". Somehow that's even more upside down and backwards than all the other nonsense put together. The nerve! _________________________________________________________________ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469229/direct/01/ 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/ 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/
