Ham,
This "subjective agent" when looked for cannot be found. There is
experience as awareness, but all that can be said or thought about
such awareness it is not: not this, not that. I do not know how an
explanation of such awareness can ever be true. Quality, as
unknowable, indivisable and undefinable, seems the best we can say; it
is pure experience.
Your posts, of all, drive me tongue twisted.
Marsha
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 13, 2010, at 3:29 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote:
Gav asks:
How does a concept evolve/grow/extend when it is seen
in the light of other concepts....? This is a new type of dialectic,
in which the goal is not to synthesise or reduce, rather it seeks
to keep the contrasting elements in a kind of creative tension -
seeing what new ideas/insights are gained from these interrelations.
This is *creative philosophy*; philosophy has never really been
a search for truth, not even science is that (science is more about
a search for function)...philosophy is about love and wisdom....
As for the wisdom bit....what is wisdom? Knowledge of the
implicate order or tao perhaps? and this is an intuitive knowledge
- a *knowing* rather than knowledge - knowledge *in action*.
Creative philosophy - I like that....sounds good.
Marsha says:
I've always thought of the moq as an atheistic, anti-thesitic place
where I might be a religious person who doesn't believe in god,
or better yet, a place without such divisions as I and god.
Gav responds:
You can't solve religious problems - they are mysteries.
How do you solve the tao? or the mystery of the cross.
Pirsig is naive here Quality is nature; so quality is pantheistic?
Sounds like Spinoza. Pantheism is a theism.
Pirsig misconstrues faith; faith is at the heart of everything -
it is what it means to know oneself. The delphic maxim and faith
are identical. Intellectual truth? What is that? Intellectual
truth
is existential truth - truth is not generalisable, truth is a
pathless
land (krishnamurti). Spirit and faith are existential terms.
Dropping existential criteria is at odds with an using a radically
empirical metaphysics. It is incongruent. From these annotations
Pirsig doesn't look much better than Dawkins.
It's sad to see this forum degenerating into a lament for the
inadequacies of philosophy and transcendentalism. Nihilism at its
best is an expression of discontent, of longing for the joy of the
believer when holding a belief is no longer acceptable. Instead we
dwell on philosophilology -- wondering if James can be "reconciled"
with Royce, or Hegel with Northrop, or Strawson with Pirsig. Or how
the "professionals" are stuck with recursion. Oh, the futility of
it all!
Cynicism has never been the heart of philosophy, nor will it satisfy
our quest for spiritual understanding. Instead of excoriating
theism and glorifying atheism, might it not be more productive to
explore the reasons that mysticism and religion have for thousands
of years provided the valuistic and moral basis for human
civilization? Indeed, the development of philosophy itself owes
much to the inspiration of gnostics and monastic thinkers.
Actually, Marsha may have unknowingly put her finger on the nature
of man's discontent when she described her search for a "...place
where I might be a religious person who doesn't believe in god, or
better yet, a place without such divisions as I and god." None of
us want to be "religious persons", but we all seek to satisfy our
spiritual needs.
Why do you suppose we are spiritually unfulfilled? Marsha has
answered that, too. Because we all feel the "division between I and
god" as estrangement from the source of our existence. We are, in
fact, lacking the 'essence' of our being. Just what is that
essential source? Mr. Pirsig has contented some by proposing that
it's Quality. But we know Quality as our measure of value or
goodness. To evaluate something as good or bad requires a cognitive
subject, yet Pirsig denies a subjective agent as anything but a
"pattern of Quality". Obviously, this is an epistemological
paradox, for we can't appreciate (have an affinity for) value if it
is the very nature of our being.
I'll stop here, because I've already made my point, and it's
unfortunately not a concept of the MoQ. But just maybe it will
inspire others to come out of their nihilistic fog long enough to
consider the implications of my argument.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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