Hello everyone On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 12:47 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dan said to Marsha: > As I read it, your question is explained right here in the snippet Dave > provided: "For our ability to describe or report a wide-range of tastes and > smells lags far behind our capacity to actually have an experience of a > nearly infinite spectrum of tastes and smells. In other words, the > deliverances of our senses continually run ahead of both our descriptive > vocabularies as well as our conceptual abilities." > > dmb says: > Right, I gave up after 3 or 4 of these moves wherein Marsha asks the question > after it's already been answered once or twice. Pirsig says very much the > same thing in ZAMM so that it's not just a quote I hoped she'd understand but > also a Pirsigian idea that she'd recognize and remember. THE EMPHASIS IS > MINE...
Dan: I was a bit befuddled by her answer to your post. I read the paper you provided a link to and the snip you posted to her seemed to address her concerns quite directly. I couldn't understand why she wasn't seeing the same thing we're seeing there. Normally I tend to ignore Marsha and a number of other contributors unless they happen to address me specifically. However, in the past those exchanges have been far from fruitful so far as holding any sort of intelligent discourse with one another so I doubt I will respond any longer. My latest exchange with Mark is a good example. What is the sense? I thought it might be me but I've enjoyed several discussions in the past with folk like you, Matt Kundert, Paul Turner, and many others as well, plus the current discussion I am taking part in with David Harding seems very productive even though we have our resident snipers trying their best to shoot us down. So I am starting to suspect it isn't me... and I haven't the time to waste with nonsense. >dmb: > "... at the cutting edge of time, before an object can be distinguished, > there must be a kind of non-intellectual awareness, which he called awareness > of Quality. You can't be aware that you've seen a tree until after you've > SEEN the tree, and between the instant of VISION and instant of awareness > there must be a time lag. We sometimes think of that time lag as unimportant, > But there's no justification for thinking that the time lag is unimportant... > none whatsoever." --Pirsig in ZAMM > > > "...The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time > lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any INTELLECTUALLY > CONCEIVED object is always in the past and therefore unreal. REALITY is > always the MOMENT OF VISION BEFORE the intellectualization takes place. There > is no other reality. This PRE-INTELLECTUAL REALITY is what Phædrus felt he > had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable > things must emerge from this pre-intellectual reality, Quality is the parent, > the source of all subjects and objects." --Pirsig in ZAMM > > > "The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called > 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality > doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of > definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to > INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION. Quality is indivisible, undefinable and > unknowable IN THE SENSE that there is a KNOWER AND A KNOWN, but a metaphysics > can be none of these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and > knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." --Pirsig in LILA > > > These are Pirsig's central ideas, the MOQ's core concepts. Dan: Yes, this is right on. I suppose some people can take these quotes on their own and twist them into meaning something completely foreign to the MOQ but taken as a whole it is pretty clear that if a person is genuinely unable to grasp these core concepts they will never understand the MOQ and its nuances. To keep coming back to the beginning after all these years is rather frustrating to be sure. dmb: >I can see how a new-comer might have questions about this but few have been >here as long as Marsha. She must have been exposed to these ideas over a >thousand times by now. This level of incorrigibility has to be some kind of >miracle, some kind of evil magic spell that blocks the capacity to learn. >Maybe it's a piece of performance art? An experiment to see how long a person >can remain in the dark? I don't know. But one thing is for sure; it's >definitely never been about exchanging ideas. She wants nothing to do with >anything like that. Apparently. Dan: Well, I think she has demonstrated that repeatedly over the years. And why I bothered writing, I don't know. I guess it seemed better than not writing. Still, it is always a pleasure to talk with you again! Thank you, Dan http://www.danglover.com 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/md/archives.html
