From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Jul 15 2005 - 05:50:26 BST
Arlo (and all) --
> "In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms
> respond to our environment with an invention of many
> marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees,
> stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy,
> engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues
> reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children
> in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. ...
> Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to
> create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.
>
> "Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it
> within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why
> Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something
> less than Quality itself."
That's all very nice poetry, and I can almost hear a choir with string
accompaniment in the background. But isn't it the challenge of philosophy
to define reality in a logically credible fashion? To take an esthetic
human response, which is incapable of definition as a generative force, and
posit it as the "cause of the created world" is to abandon logic for a
phantasmagoria of word symbols.
Let's try an approach that's less pretty syntactically but closer to logic.
If quality is the "stimulus our environment puts upon us to create the
world", then the environment is the primary cause, and we are the world's
creators. But what is the "environment" if not our physical reality? Thus,
stripped of its poetry, the assertion being made here is that reality forces
us to create reality. That such a tautology continues to impress Pirsig's
followers is a tribute to the author's word mastery rather than his
metaphysical logic. The (otherwise plausible) concept that man creates his
own reality loses logical credibility, unless something else -- Being,
Spirit, Energy, Consciousness, Essence? -- is posited as the primary source.
Pirsig doesn't try to develop that concept. In fact, he shuns it. As a
consequence, there is no ontological support for the MoQ.
> "Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented
> by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among
> these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are.
Here is another example of illogical rhetoric, this time a blatantly false
premise. Just consider that statement. Even if we accept the author's
"analogue" that religion is some kind of "quality", there is no way that
religion can have been invented by anything but man. Now, I expect somebody
here to accuse me of being "too literal" in this interpretation. But this
is a philosophical discussion, for pete's sake, not a forum on poetic
metaphor!
Only in this next quote does Pirsig finally begin talking like a
philosopher. It was the Platonic reasoning here that initially attracted me
to the concept he was trying to theorize. And the analogy of Socrate's
double-teamed chariot makes sense in this context:
> "Since the One is the source of all things and
> includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things,
> since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always
> describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described
> allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and
> speech. Socrates chooses a heaven-and-earth analogy, showing how
> individuals are drawn toward the One by a chariot drawn by two horses."
As for the postcript quotation which seems to have you enthralled, it is
meaningless to me.
> "These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind.
> Every last bit of it."
I have two questions concerning this statement:
1) What does "collective consciousness" have to do with any of the
"analogues" previously quoted?
2) Why did Matt Kundert insist to me that he'd never seen the term and had
no idea what it meant? (I guess Matt will have to answer that one.)
Regards,
Ham
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