Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Fri, 9 Jan 1998 00:35:02 +0100
Samuel, James and the LS
Samuel Palmer wrote:
> With respect to the questions about everything/nothing, this seems
> to be troublesome mostly because of the limitations of our language.
Yes that's absolutely right. As I see it there are two ways round this
problem. One is to take the Zen path of refusing to define anything,
avoiding the written word and basing everything on direct experience.
The other is to accept that words are limited but try and do the best we
can with them because they're all we've got.
> The MoQ suggests that the universe itself is founded on value.
> Perhaps the issue can be resolved algebraicly, assuming that the
> contents of our universe contain equal quantities of negative and
> positive values, then the sum of all parts would equal zero. In that
> sense, it is perfectly logical to suggest than when everything is added
> up, you'll get nothing.
Even if the MoQ could be represented algebraically that would leave us
facing the problem that quantum physics currently faces - it's perfectly
understandable mathematically but is a quagmire philosophically. One of
the aims of the MoQ is to make sense of the paradoxes presented by
quantum physics. If the MoQ is expressed algebraically rather than in in
everyday language then we're not really solving anything - we're just
restating the problem.
James wrote:
> Has anyone suggested yet that what is needed is an entirely new language? That is,
> a language will all of the flexibility of a natural language, but none of its
> philosophical assumptions (replacing them with MoQ style constructs) ?
I'd be intrigued to know how you would go about this, but I'm dubious
about how useful it would be. You would inevitably end up having to
translate the MoQ language into everyday language in order to explain it
to people.
In the Subjects, objects, data and values paper, Pirsig quotes
Heisenberg saying
"On cannot go entirely away from the old words because one has to talk
about something. So I could realize that I could not avoid using these
weak terms which we always have used for many years in order to describe
what I see. So I saw that in order to describe phenomena one needs a
language. The terms don't get hold of the phenomena, but still, to some
extent they do."
It's perfectly true that "Quality is reality" is not a precisely defined
statement. But then again it's not totally devoid of meaning either. It
does point the reader in the direction of what we are talking about, it
contains a certain amount of insight.
Language and definitions are a big problem in the MoQ and that's why we
need a principle such as Platt's Awareness Principle, which may even
deserve to be the very first principle because everything that follows
is affected by it:
> 2. The Awareness Principle. The essence of quality is known to us as
> awareness without content—pure, unpatterned experience. As such, it's
> impossible to describe. Whenever we try, we end up describing what we are
> aware of, not awareness itself.
I would say it's impossible to define, not describe. Descriptions of
Quality are possible to a certain extent. A description is a far less
rigorous statement than a definition. Description and explanation is
what we should be aiming for in the principles.
Diana
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