From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 16 2004 - 15:10:40 GMT
Hi All,
Mark --What do y'all think he means? Is there something OUT THERE, or not?
Chin- -It's value.
Platt-- Good question. I doubt if Pirsig would step in front of a truck claiming
it had no existence other than in his imagination.
I'm going to throw my two cents Chin's way. "Quality" is an attempt to unify the
empiricist and idealist philosophies, which are philosophified positions of
SOM.
And maybe another two cents at Mark's question that maybe it was a bit "poetic".
I get the sense that when he moves from laws, mathematics, ideas into "the
whole blessed thing", he was not talking about a denial of the physical world
per se, but was (as Marks says) perhaps doing some campfire oratory for
entertainment. Remember that somewhat later he gives up on Indian philosophy
because it denied the reality of the atom bomb.
So, back to Chin, and Platt's truck. Would Pirsig say that the "truck" exists
only in people's minds? I think he would in that if we hypothetically go back
to a pre-language time, "trucks" (rocks, trees, mountains) do not exist, only
un-named, un-defined inorganic and biological value patterns exist (as Chin
seems to say). But can those value patterns have un-quality effects on other
biological patterns? Absolutely. And hence you wouldn't step out in front of
one (as Platt seems to say).
My two, err... four, cents anyways.
Arlo
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