Paul said to Marsha:
I'd need to read this [Garfield's quotes below] a few times to try out
different interpretations with respect to the MOQ. My initial reading is that
Alice is seen as authoritative because she sees "static patterns" as "real
illusions." I don't know, the language just seems so unnecessarily tricksy. How
would you translate that last paragraph into MOQ terms?
You suggested that the alternative to your mirage analogy was clinging to
certainty but now seem to say that.....well, I don't know actually, that you
didn't mean it? Should I ignore anything you say because you have no interest
in whether it is true (by any definition) or not? I'm being genuine here. You
will know from your reading that Pirsig translates true as "having high
intellectual quality" so are you not interested in whether your words are of
high intellectual quality? If not, are you interested in whether your words
have any quality, i.e., whether they even make sense?
dmb says:
I think these quotes from Garfield support the MOQ but Marsha is using them to
undermine the MOQ. In Garfield's analogy, Bill would be some kind of realist
because he mistakes the mirage for actual water, an inherently existing
substance. Bill is deluded by SOM whereas Alice knows that the mirage isn't
substantial. The mirage isn't false or deceptive UNLESS you think it's water.
So we can read these quotes as an attack on SOM's objective truth and as
support for the MOQ's static patterns of quality. Marsha's problem is that she
uses quotes like these to attack any theory of truth, including the MOQ's
theory of truth. In other words, she mistakenly treats the cure as if it were
the disease. She treats the mirage not just as empty of inherent existence but
as altogether empty and as "real" in no sense of the word. It confuses the
solution with the problem. This renders static patterns as real in no sense of
the word. It indiscriminately kills them all.
> > "Among the many similes for conventional truth that litter Madhyamaka
> > texts, the most fruitful is that of the mirage. Conventional truth is
> > false, Candrakirti tells us, because it is deceptive. Candrakirti spells
> > this out in terms of a mirage. A mirage appears to be water, but is in fact
> > empty of water—it is deceptive, and in that sense, a false appearance. On
> > the other hand, a mirage is not nothing: it is a real mirage, just not real
> > water.
> >
> > "The analogy must be spelled out with care to avoid the extreme of
> > nihilism. A mirage appears to be water, but is only a mirage; the
> > inexperienced highway traveler mistakes it for water, and for him it is
> > deceptive, a false appearance of water; the experienced traveler sees it
> > for what it is—a real mirage, empty of water. Just so, conventional
> > phenomena appear to ordinary, deluded beings to be inherently existent,
> > whereas in fact they are merely conventionally real, empty of that inherent
> > existence; to the åryas, on the other hand, they appear to be merely
> > conventionally true, hence to be empty. For us, they are deceptive, false
> > appearances; for them, they are simply real conventional truths.
> >
> > "We can update the analogy to make the point more plainly. Imagine three
> > travelers along a hot desert highway. Alice is an experienced desert
> > traveler; Bill is a neophyte; Charlie is wearing polarizing sunglasses.
> > Bill points to a mirage up ahead and warns against a puddle on the road;
> > Alice sees the mirage as a mirage and assures him that there is no danger.
> > Charlie sees nothing at all, and wonders what they are talking about. If
> > the mirage were entirely false—if there were no truth about it at all,
> > Charlie would be the most authoritative of the three (and Buddhas would
> > know nothing of the real world). But that is wrong. Just as Bill is
> > deceived in believing that there is water on the road, Charlie is incapable
> > of seeing the mirage at all, and so fails to know what Alice knows—that
> > there is a real mirage on the road, which appears to some to be water, but
> > which is not. There is a truth about the mirage, despite the fact that it
> > is deceptive, and Alice is authoritative with respect to it precisely
> > because she sees it as it is, not as it appears to the uninitiated."
> >
> > (Garfield, Jay L., 'MOONSHADOWS: Taking Conventional Truth
> > Seriously', pp. 29-30)
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