Hi Andre & Erin
On 17 Jul 2002 at 2:41, André wrote:
> Cool. So, as Horse would have it, everyone knows
> exactly what it means and no further argument is
> required.
Are you saying that you don't understand what is real?
On 16 Jul 2002 at 22:14, Erin Noonan wrote:
> Erin: No this is not a problem. But the problem I have
> had lately with where this thread has been going is
> that reality is thrown around like it is a well known
> given.
>
> Here is a quote from crusing blues but I think it
> applies here for some particular members i won't bother to mention.
> "Scientists and philosophers spend their entire working lives puzzling over
> the nature of reality, but now the depressed ones use the term freely, as
> though everyone should know and agree with what they mean by it."
There is a difference between what science and (some) philosophy means by reality and
what we experience, but Pirsig doesn't seem to feel there is that much of a problem
either judging from the below:
"Almost as great as this "value" platypus is another one handled by the Metaphysics of
Quality: the "scientific reality" platypus. This is a very large monster that has been
disturbing a lot of people for a long time. It was identified a century ago by the
mathematician and astronomer, Henri Poincaré who asked, "Why is the reality most
acceptable to science one that no small child can be expected to understand?"
Should reality be something that only a handful of the world's most advanced physicists
understand? One would expect at least a majority of people to understand it. Should
reality be expressible only in symbols that require university-level mathematics to
manipulate? Should it be something that changes from year to year as new scientific
theories are formulated? Should it be something about which different schools of
physics can quarrel for years with no firm resolution on either side? If this is so then how
is it fair to imprison a person in a mental hospital for life with no trial and no jury and no
parole for "failing to understand reality"? By this criterion shouldn't all but a handful of
the world's most advanced physicists be locked up for life? Who is crazy here and who
is sane?
In a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality this "scientific reality" platypus vanishes.
Reality, which is value, is understood by every infant. It is a universal starting place of
experience that everyone is confronted with all the time. Within a Metaphysics of
Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the
patterns are not the reality they describe."
Lila Chapter 8
Horse
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