Hi all, "dan" intellectually valued this typing experience:
>What it comes down to is, who is experiencing that which is experienced?
>What is it that values the experience? This question runs to the core of
>our
>beings.
Ahh... Yes.
Now, my understanding of P's take on the matter comes from that nasty
little passage: "there is no "I".
Again, in static reality there are patterns of experience which we call
mind, which consist of social and intellectual value-events, and those we
call body, which consist of inorganic and biological value-events.
Mankind has always identified himself (first) with his body (ancestry), or
then with his mind (Descartes). This Cartesian "I", existing in some big
armchair as an "autonomous little homunculus" (as Rog likes to quote P), is
what P refers to as "subject", yes?
It is the mind which then is the source of "subjective" value-judgements,
according to SOM-reason.
However, the same "subjectiveness" used to refer to intellectual and
social "opinions" is _also_ applied to the value-judgements made by your
body - your senses, yes? Was that dinner _really_ good, or was it :just:
because you "happen" to -like- liver?
It is here where I find confusion with P's final take on the SOM. Does
"subjective" refer to the world of -thought-, or of -personal (physical and
mental) taste-? I find that overall he equates subjective with the mental
side of metaphysics. By doing so, in order to escape the charges of Quality
being relative, he must then deny the existence of a "subjective" "Self"
which is distinct from the body and mind which it Wills and is Conscious of,
through Experience.
It is this "Self" which I feel to be the one which Henri Bergson indicates
by his (non)-concept of "duration", which is known through dynamic
"intuition" rather than static "analysis".
Moreover, just beyond Bergson's logic lies, I "intuit", what it is that
Zen tries to achieve during this life of ours. In fact, Bergson even offers
to define metaphysics (roughly) as being that intuitive movement of
conscious intellectual sympathy whereby we come to know absolutely just
"what it is" which we are contemplating, by analagously "entering into it",
in contrast to "moving round it" with static, old, relative knowledge to be
had through "classical" analysis of those patterns perceivable through
varied perspectives of the intellect.
His idea of the act of pure metaphysics itself involves the creation and
expression of new ways of manipulating conceptual reality. This "creation"
or "manipulation" takes place -without- concepts, before concepts, as he
makes it clear that the undifferentiated continuum which intuition grasps in
all it's pure duration is where true metaphysics takes place. Science (SOM)
always deals with things after they have passed, all chopped up into parts,
so to speak.
Now, my point is this. I like the idea of the Self being that which our
intellects right now _may_ perceive, however imperfectly, to be that
experience we intuitively understand as occuring "always just right before"
any thought or sensation of mental of physical value is distinguished, which
uses the word Self. This experience, which because of the undeniable nature
of existence as occuring in a continuous, unbroken flux, is what Pirsig
refers to as (Capital-D)ynamic Quality. That which Bergson calls a "flux of
intuitive duration", Whitehead calls "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum",
James "?", etc...
This Dynamic Self, it seems, is so hard to reach through thought because
it's like an eye trying to see itself.
>That which is not observed has no value.
Yes, exactly. However, this is just the "tree falling in the forest"
problem, isn't it? I feel that it is answered well by the MOQ in stating
that atoms, cells, trees, wind and water all -are- experience, and though
"I" have never experienced that particular event, I "know" it to make a
noise through a very simple rational deduction from other similar
Quaity-Events, thereby experiencing a feeling of high intellectual value
given by the explanation.
Anyways, I should go.
Many thanks for your replies.
Has any of this made sense?
Rich
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