From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 05 2004 - 16:46:25 BST
David M,
> Scott [prev]: Even if one wants to keep to a temporal story, which in a
way we have
> to,
> since we cannot imagine eternity, it is possible to speak of intellect
> before there were people, and without positing an anthropomorphic Designer
> God. On the biological level, instinct acts as a conceptual realm by which
> the animal can react to particulars. An animal may have never encountered
> some other animal before, but instinct -- a set of generalized patterns --
> will get it to flee or chase. And on the inorganic level, physical law is
a
> conceptual reality that the physical things will always follow (though who
> is to say that physical laws haven't changed over the eons).
>
>
> DM: This is 100% right as far as I am concerned. I think Pirsig
> leaves intellect on the 4th level with man as so many people
> understand intellect only in human terms. Pirsig instead simply
> explains how SQ/DQ manifests differently on different levels due
> to what emerges as now being possible as the levels are built on top
> of each other. SQ itself implies universality. You see concepts as
> essential to universality as Hegel rightly does and therefore say
intellect
> where
> Hegel says reason. Pirsig tries to keep off of these to avoid attack of
> anthropocentrism. But to me the emergence of SQ/DQ is clearly
> full of what cunning to borrow a word from Hegel. I take this to
> be a quality of DQ that emerges on all levels. Even the abraxas moth has a
> yearning love of its dream image of the universal light, or of the
> ideal-lady
> moth.
[Scott:] I am not sure you are right about Pirsig. If you are, then I would
say he is being intellectually dishonest, that he is pulling his punches to
keep some respectability. What I think is more likely is that his
conception of Buddhism is somewhat misguided, and that leads him to
denigrate the intellect, to see it as something to be surpassed, and not to
see it as something to be worked on and purified.
- Scott
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Sep 05 2004 - 17:13:58 BST