Struan,
Aside from your obvious attempt at a rude put-down, your
statement that members of this website are brainless is way
off base. It is not correct. They certainly do have brains.
It's just that they are more or less in denial about this fact.
Big difference.
Most seem to think that if we avoid talking about the brain
and its generalized flim-flam called substance, it will vaporize
in a puff of metaphysical smoke. Dumbo calls brain stuff "goo",
and 3WD calls physics "Advanced Flubberology".
I think Pirsig mentions the brain exactly once in Lila, but only
to point out that values do not originate there (Ch. 8). Brains
make a surprise cameo appearance in his latest letter to Bo, where
his point is that quality processing is a predominantly right
brain activity and is therefore more evident in left-handed
people, and left means sinister, ergo quality is sinister.
At least, amongst this gibberish, he concedes that brains serve
some purpose in filtering quality, if not in creating it.
But in reading Lila you would not have known even this for
sure. We hear about substance being manifested as static
patterns originating in quality "events", or we hear about
undivided quality "experiences", but these are awkward phrases
that leave something out. They are dis-embodied. No mention is
made about what participates in these events and experiences.
One could make the assumption that it is the brain, but since
Pirsig doesn't explicitly say so, and because his ideas are so
weird to begin with, one is left wondering.
So why doesn't he mention brains? This is an easy one.
It's to avoid the DQ/matter problem, which has striking
similarities to the mind/matter problem. If Pirsig starts saying
that brains can experience DQ, it opens up a whole can of worms
which, presumably, he'd rather avoid.
For one, he's left with the unenviable task of providing a
mechanism by which brains experience DQ. And this will be hard,
because DQ is undefined. It is not substance, it is not energy.
It is "out there" but is only felt "in here". How it gets from
"out there" to "in here" is anybody's guess.
For another, he has to explain how a quality experience, which
involves the brain and DQ, creates substance. Not only is
this problem unenviable, but its premise seems preposterous
considering what we know about the abilities of brains. (Note
that the idea of creating substance through quality events seemed
preposterous even before brains entered the equation, but after
even more so.)
Weighing his alternatives, Pirsig must have felt it an easier
route to subvert the ideas at the root of mechanistic science
than to utter the 'b' word and address these problems, much less
attempt to solve them.
Glenn
__________________________________________________________________
Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Webmail account today at
http://webmail.netscape.com/
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
