"As mentioned above, Pirsig considers any philosophy that asserts that reality
is composed from mind or matter or a combination of both is an SOM philosophy."
(McWatt, PhD Thesis 2005, p119)
On Sep 3, 2010, at 11:06 AM, Andre Broersen wrote:
> dmb quotes:
> "In 'Does Consciousness Exist?', which Bertrand Russell claimed 'startled the
> world', James says the answer is no. 'Consciousness is the name of a
> non-entity'. As we generally conceive of it, consciousness is the 'faint
> rumor left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy'. If
> we were to speak precisely, James says, consciousness is 'only a name for the
> fact that the 'content' of experiences IS KNOWN'. The reason James makes this
> explicit break is because he has in his sights the old and comfortable
> dualisms of subject and object, spirit and nature, mind and matter. James
> argues that instead of dueling entities there is only process. 'I mean only
> to deny that the word (consciousness) stands for an entity, but to insist
> most emphatically that it does stand for a function'.this was not a wholly
> new idea for James. Indeed, he specifically refers back to his PRINCIPLES OF
> PSYCHOLOGY, published 14 years earlier, in which, he reminds his readers, 'I
> have tried
to show that we need no knower other than the 'passing thought'.'
>
> Andre:
> Great dmb! Compare the above with this observation:
> "...one should try and imagine all things, objects of experience and oneself,
> the one who is experiencing, as just a flow of perceptions. We do not know
> that there is something 'out there'. We have only experiences of colours,
> shapes,tactile data, and so on. We also do not know that we ourselves are
> anything other than a further series of experiences. Taken together, there is
> only an ever-changing flow of perceptions- vijnaptimatra. Due to our
> beginningless ignorance we construct these perceptions into enduring subjects
> and objects confronting eachother. This is irrational, things are not really
> like that, and it leads to suffering and frustration. The constructed objects
> are the conceptualized aspect. The flow of perceptions which forms the basis
> for our mistaken constructions is the dependent aspect'.(Paul
> Williams,'Mahayana Buddhism',pp 83-4).
>
> A 'knower' without anything 'known' is a contradiction in terms. The
> 'objective' looking over the 'subjective' is a contradiction in terms. It is
> a fallacy, and for some here on this list to suggest that the intellectual
> level is just that: the objective over the subjective, is plain silly.
>
> Marsha apparently still has not shaken the SOL interpretation and Mary has
> just found out that 'the real action might be to understand the empty space
> between the matter'.
>
> My response is that the MOQ does just that: it suggests that we look at the
> 'events', the relationships, the space(which is not empty!)between... . That
> IS where the action is. As a matter of fact, that is the primary stuff. The
> relationships ARE the 'preferences', the valuations, the quality.
>
> Yes there are dualisms. We cannot do without them. Our language is an attempt
> to assist us in making explicit these quality events, these relationships.
> The West has taken these to the extreme, indeed that dualims are opposed to
> each other and as dmb has pointed out in various of his references, different
> schools have sought different ways of uniting the two. Thing is; they were
> never 'opposed'.
>
> I suppose in some ways 'language',a patterned series of sounds evolved from
> ritual to perform a revelatory function. It sought to 'reveal'. As with many
> rituals, we began to believe in the ritual itself and forgot what it sought
> to reveal...arete, rta... .
>
> I had a friend around last night over a good old BBQ who can read Chinese and
> I showed him the second verse of the Tao Te Ching. The verse is about the
> 'opposites' and goes something like: 'Under heaven beauty is beauty only
> because there is ugliness'. (this is the English translation) but he said:
> 'No, that is not what it says here in Chinese! Lao Tzu never said this!
>
> What it says is, beauty IS ugliness, high IS low, front IS back etc. What it
> made clear to me is that the 'Eastern' intellectual pattern comprises
> dualisms but it is a 'no-two dualism'. In MOQ terms this may perhaps be
> likened to the intellectual/code of art dance-in-one?
>
> Mr. Pirsig did say that LILA was written as a koan. Well, that is pretty
> close as far as my understanding of the function of a koan goes.
>
> Anyway,this is the way I am trying to comprehend the MOQ, as it 'stands' i.e
> as a metaphysics (a static intellectual pattern of value)and as a guide to
> 'being'.
>
>
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