Re: MD Strawman and Harmony

[RISKYBIZ9]

To: Struan From: Rog Re: Subject Object Duality Struan, Pirsig is a mystic.  He rejects the fundamental duality of subject and object, mind and matter.  He suggests that the most empirical way to evaluate reality is as a stream of dynamic and flowing pure experience (dynamic quality) and the wake of static abstractions (static quality) derived from this experience.   Mind/matter/subject/object/today/yesterday/internal/external are all just divisions and patterned combinations derived from such experiences.  But you know this. To mystics, most of Western philosophy and science is rampant with problems inherent to the dualistic worldview.  Picking up any book on philosophy reveals entire chapters on such dualistic pseudoproblems as free will, perception, ethics and the mind body problem.  There are entire schools or disciplines taking different subject/object sides or attempting bridges on these issues.  There are realists, idealists, epistemological dualists, phenomenologists, subjectivists, objectivists, intuitionists, prescriptivists, emotivists, interactionists, agnostic interactionists, reductive materialists, epiphenomenalists (sp?), parallelists and panpsychologists.   Entire fields of western philosophy can be dissolved as meaningless once we recognize that they are all based on a common pattern of unacknowledged assumptions.  The MOQ does point out this assumption and explores what metaphysics looks like when this duality is questioned.  Whether the MOQ succeeds any better than its competitors is of course a different question.   Other mystic-oriented philosophers have similarly criticized Western philosophy and offered their remedies, and the MOQ overlaps greatly with many of these.. Does Pirsig oversimplify?  Yes.  But he has to if he is going to capture common characteristics of so many Western styles.  Does he oversimplify to the point of making a strawman caricature of western philosophy?  No, not in my opinion, though I am certainly not an expert.  I have only taken one philosophy class in my life (Intro to Philosophy 101 -- but I DID GET AN A !), but I can (and have) read many of the different schools of philosophy and I find these exact same dualistic assumptions. They are absolutely rampant.   I also find them littered throughout most scientific writing. Your continued denial of these commonly shared characteristics of Western philosophy seems odd to me, but as members of this forum will attest, I am sometimes wrong.... OH!!!  And in keeping with the nature of how many in this forum have tended to argue with you over the years (ie rudely), let me add that if you don't agree with me, that your parents were space monkeys.  ;^)  I guess that pretty much proves my point...no? Nice having you back though! Rog PS -- Hey Elephant, I TOTALLY agree with you on the nature of patterns.  100%. PPS -- Struan, laughter doesn't "not exist" in SOM, it is divided into internal sensations of laughter  and external perceptions of laughter.  To the best of my knowledge, the various schools of SOM have done a bang-up job of sorting the various pieces of Humpty Dumpty reality into their various dualistic buckets. What they don't do well is put our friend back together again.