From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 29 2004 - 21:02:29 BST
Hi Keith,
>
> De-lurk
>
> "This means Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject
> and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced
> from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and
> objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the
> Quality!"
>
> ...
>
> "He then proceeded in terms of the trinity to answer the question, Why does
> everybody see Quality differently? This was the question he had always had
> to answer speciously before. Now he said, ``Quality is shapeless, formless,
> indescribable. To see shapes and forms is to intellectualize. Quality is
> independent of any such shapes and forms. The names, the shapes and forms
> we give Quality depend only partly on the Quality. They also depend partly
> on the a priori images we have accumulated in our memory. We constantly
> seek to find, in the Quality event, analogues to our previous experiences.
> If we didn't we'd be unable to act. We build up our language in terms of
> these analogues. We build up our whole culture in terms of these
> analogues."
>
> "The reason people see Quality differently, he said, is because they come
> to it with different sets of analogues. He gave linguistic examples,
> showing that to us the Hindi letters da, da, and dha all sound identical to
> us because we don't have analogues to them to sensitize us to their
> differences. Similarly, most Hindi-speaking people cannot distinguish
> between da and the because they are not so sensitized. It is not uncommon,
> he said, for Indian villagers to see ghosts. But they have a terrible time
> seeing the law of gravity."
Thanks for delurking to address the question. Since it appears to be
Pirsig's view that Quality is independent of "shapes and forms" and thus
independent of the intellectual level (where our experiences are
"intellectualized") it looks like Quality is off in a category all its
own, transcending intellect. So again we're faced with a mysterious
something that we believe exists (because we can't imagine a world without
it) but that we can't pin down using scientific methods of determining
truth from falsehoods.
Many people can't imagine a world without purpose that just happened to
suddenly appear from nothing accidentally. So they believe some creative
force exists and find evidence for it in the design of nature, in
revelation, in meditation, and in beauty. This belief, too, can't be
pinned down by science.
If Quality resides outside intellect, is considered to be a creative force
(DQ) and is immanent in all things (SQ), one can only surmise it has God-
like characteristics. Is that no so?
Best,
Platt
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