From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Jan 13 2004 - 04:12:46 GMT
Anthony,
> Scott said:
>
> Yes, the static patterns manifest DQ, but my objection is that Pirsig
takes this in a nominalistic way, as evidenced by his considering DQ as
"pre-intellectual", and in general seeing the intellect as covering up DQ.
>
> Ant:
>
> I've been given the above objection some thought. However, I don't
understand what you mean exactly by "the intellect as covering up DQ". If
you could phrase this in a different way and/or expand on it that will
enable me to give you a suitable response.
I'm thinking, for example, of the hot stove discussion in Ch. 9:
"When the person who sits on the stove first discovers his low-Quality
situation, the front edge of his experience is Dynamic. He does not think
"This stove is hot", and then make a rational decision to get off. A "dim
apprehension of he knows not what" gets him off Dynamically. Later he
generates static patterns of thought to explain the situation."
..."Phaedrus thought of the two kinds of students, those who study only
subject-object science and those who study only meditative mysticism, it
would be the meditative mystics who get off the stove first. The purpose of
mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from experience but to bring
one's self closer to it by eliminating stale, confusing, static,
intellectual attachments of the past."
True, he does not directly say that the intellect "covers up" DQ, but that
seems to me be the tone he is taking here and elsewhere.
By the way, as I argued a while back, I think his characterization of the
hot stove situation is faulty. What gets one off is a static pattern of
biological value, namely a reflex, not DQ. Further, I would say that, though
in practice both the mystic and science student would in fact both get off
right away, the mystic, by being focused more strongly in the present, would
have the option of staying on the stove -- that is, would be more capable of
not reacting reflexively, being more detached,.and that is the only Dynamic
possibility here. Not that I want to test it :-)
- Scott
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