hi Jonathan,
It's late, so just a couple of quick ones.
I agree that Pirsig's approachis ingenious, and indeed it kept me going for
a while, 25 years ago, when I came to feel that there seemed to be no such
thing as "absolute" anything.
I also agree that the absence of this "absoluteness" does not in any way
imply that "anything goes," or that one truth is as good as another - that
way surely lies madness (or a career in marketing).
But i don't wholly agree that we need to completely ditch a truth when we
find a better one; Newtonian physics still works quite well in some
situations.
And I don't wholly agree that we should only forgo a truth when we come
across a better one. It's a timescale thing, really - better merely means
more appropriate in current circumstances, -according to our ability to
assess such circumstances. So the truth we use is tied up with some notion
of competance(in the widest sense). And sometimes we may utilise multiple
(and sometimes mutually contradictory) truths simultaneously. If we can't
resolve the paradox, we just sort of 'switch between'. But resolving the
apparent paradox generally requires some sort of paradigm shift, and it has
always been my impression that that is what Pirsig was writing about.
The other thing I have a problem with is the association of "Quality" with
"utility" which you implied in your last. It seems to me that, at times,
concepts of quality may indeed lack immediate utility (say,
life-or-death-urgent situations); but surely that wouldn't need to detract
from the intrinsic quality of such concepts? (there's something here about
subjectivity, I think). In fact, Utility - to the individual- is wholly tied
up with time-frame considerations.
Lastly, the mysticism thing: perhaps I'm using a slightly different idea of
mysticism; I merely think of it as referring to the 'unknowable' in the
sense of indefinable. for this, only the edges need to be "hidden". This
definition applies to more entities that we 'know' than we generally
realise. Perhaps I'm wrong here, in which case I need another word for that
concept. Suggestions, anyone?
I think that David Prince's mail dealt quite well with the notion that we
*know* what Quality is, so it isn't mystical, so I won't add to it.
cheers,
peter
Peter Lennox
Hardwick House
tel: (0114) 2661509
e-mail: peter@lennox01.freeserve.co.uk
or:- ppl100@york.ac.uk
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