Hello Marsha, > I have nothing to say about 'truth'. The idea of truth does not interest me. > I'll repeat: the idea of truth does not interest me. I prefer to think of > knowledge as static patterns of value.
Why do you prefer to think of knowledge as that? What's wrong with truth? What about facts? Do you not like them? The power of facts is that they are true. What about this computer you are using now? That is based on truth and facts. It wouldn't exist if those things didn't exist. Way to be grateful.. > I have not said I dislike the word 'truth'. I know of nothing that I am > avoiding. I can only repeat that the idea of truth does not interest me. But why? > The idea of 'truth' is an intellectual pattern. You might like to classify > patterns as truths, but I do not. Maybe 'conventional (relative) truth' or > 'provincial truth', but not 'truth'. I do like 'hypothetical'. Even my > little dog Bebe I consider hypothetical. To say that things are 'hypothetical' is a smack in the face for all families and friends of people who have died before their time has come. "Don't worry that little Timmy died. He was only 'hypothetical' after all". Could you be any less empathetic? You talk about how you are so empathetic and how important a trait it is, but claiming that things are just 'hypothetical' and don't really exist, is a huge slap in the face to anyone who has undergone any sort of traumatic experience - to put it mildly. > I think experience as process is more complex and interdependent then a > simple truth can represent. Unless you were there, aren't you projecting > what helps the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima? Within the MoQ, it would > be biological patterns that would move the victims to survive. I think. No it would be the non-hypothical bombs being not dropped which would have allowed the victims of Hiroshima to survive. If you call empathising with the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima as 'projecting' then that is very ironic. >> But life isn't continuous Marsha. That's my point. One day you and I >> and everyone else who is alive is going to die. That's true and not >> 'hypothetical'. > > What I might think about death IS hypothetical. There's a straw man. What might happen afterwards is hypothetical yes. No one has experienced that. But you know I'm talking about the fact that we are going to die. We experience that. There isn't a living thing over the last millions of years who time hasn't eventually come. That's not hypothetical. That's a fact. >> Everything is a 'gift' of the ultimate truth. Saying that is like >> saying the sun will rise tomorrow. So what? We are alive and there are >> facts of life which are true. We cannot wish those facts of life away >> just by pretending they are 'incomplete' or 'co-dependent'. > > This comment goes somewhere far beyond my statement, imho. Care to explain? I will repeat. In philosophy reasoning is very valuable. Wouldn't you agree? >> The bombing of Japan had a certain rightness to it to those who >> ordered the bombings. While we disagree about our descriptions of >> what is right, it is our descriptions which differ and not the >> rightness itself. > > Hypothetically, of course. You were not there, and you were not someone who > ordered the bombing either. Were you? No I wasn't. But no matter how little rightness anyone ever thought about it, it still has a level of quality, or value, or rightness to it. Low value is still value. I value the MOQ highly. And that I value the MOQ means that I think everything is right, valuable, moral, good. No matter how low quality or bad something is, it still has a certain amount of value. This is not hypothetical. The power of the MOQ is that we can rank those things and argue about those rankings based on how evolved they are. >> No it wasn't and this points to what appears to be your misreading on >> ZMM. The whole point of why Phædrus left India was that they were >> claiming what you are claiming now. That the bombs were 'illusory'.. > > How real is such an event to you? Will your knowledge of those bombs ever be > direct, complete and certain, or is you knowledge an imaginative construct? > Isn't your knowledge of this event nothing but an abstracted feeling of > horror mixed with a confused sense of patriotic justification constructed > from a bit of film and commentary seen on the television? How much more is > your truth of that bombing? Such an event is as real as any event which ever existed and ever will exist. All knowledge is an imaginative construct. Saying this is like saying all objects are matter. So what? How 'true' something is as I have explained to you, is how good it explains experience. You're right, I have read books about the event, watched documentaries, seen people interviewed and talked to the descendants of the families victims of bombing. Now to link all of those experiences together there is a truth which says 'there was a bombing'. That a really good truth because it gives a great deal of respect to those people affected by it.. > The story of Phædrus's experience was told of a young man. Is there anything > to prove an older, wiser Phædrus doesn't have a deeper, wiser understanding > of what those professors were trying to get him to understand? Yes. The fact that in Lila, Pirsig emphasises the importance of Metaphysics which by definition is a collection of intellectual truths. >> "But one day in the classroom, the professor of philosophy was blindly >> expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed like >> the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it >> was believed that the atomic bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima >> and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That >> was the end of the exchange. >> >> Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been >> correct, but for Phaedrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers >> regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of >> human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the >> classroom, left India and gave up." > > Phædrus told of an event that took place very early in his story. I bet much > of his understanding changed in many ways from that point-in-time. So he regrets ever leaving India? Back to you Marsha - have you ever heard or read Pirsig say that Phaedrus regretted leaving India? No. Have I given you a good reason why he did? Yes. >>> It is a most difficult challenge to understanding, and I believe the path >>> to opening one's heart. I did try to bring up the Buddhist conception of >>> the Two-Truths, but those too are just words. And I only make others angry >>> if I say the fundamental nature of static quality is Dynamic Quality. It >>> sounds insane to say it is suffering and, at the same time, it is good, >>> valuable, moral and right. But that's the way it is, or seems to be to me. >> >> Yes static quality is suffering and good, valuable, moral and right. >> Static quality does come from Dynamic Quality. But it is not Dynamic >> Quality. They are two very different Qualities. One is interested in >> particulars, while the other is no thing at all. > > The statement is 'The fundamental nature of static quality is Dynamic > Quality', and I am interested in the fundamental nature of static patterns > being Dynamic Quality. To put it another way, I am interested in a pattern > being no thing at all. That would make you a mystic with no regard for static patterns. > As knowledge, does a static pattern really represent a particular experience? Ultimately no it doesn't but it's all we have - so let's get these patterns as good as we can. > Or does a pattern represent a generalized accumulation of repetitive, > artificially isolated experiences, that are somewhat similar and which > consciousness interactively reconstructs into particulars? I agree with that except for the term artificial. Patterns are not artificial any more than eating an orange in the morning is artificial. Here's a sarcastic suggestion - why not rename Dynamic Quality - Real Quality and static quality - artificial quality. Aren't they such better terms!?! > (And to those who would like to label me anti-intellectual, to my mind this > makes them all the more wondrous.) Yes, because all intellect does is destroy the wonder! "To the intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has lasted too long. Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity. But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life." -David. 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