Hi Elephant
First of all, his name is Pirsig, not Prisig.
Second, I don't agree at all that the MoQ's, nor the levels', only purpose
is to have something informative to say about 20th century America. I think
they are relevant for all thinkable, plus the non-thinkable, stages of the
universe. But this is only to be expected from a metaphysics worth discussing.
That's what I've been trying to say in my last two posts, that if you can
prove anything really contradictory within the MoQ, I'd leave the squad in
a jiffy and start driving trucks.
> This is one I get all the time (outside MOQ) so I ought to be (a) getting
> better at answering it or (b) acknowledging the error of my ways. Sadly
> neither seems to happen, as I remain convinced that it is a non-question,
> and tend to say so, at length. "If there were no intellectual beings
> around, who was there to intellectually perceive all the inorganic,
> biological and social patterns out there?" Well, no-one. And your point
> is? And your point is that this means that I am denying the existence of
> the universe before the appearance of man, and re-inventing some creation
> story in denial of all the geological and evolutionary facts? Well of
> course I'm not.
No, but you are making the same mistake Poincaré did, "I think, therefore
I am". Try dropping an iron on your toe and see if that feels real. There's
no need to think, the iron feels *really* real anyway.
> Intellectual patterns just aren't what fossilise, so the
> argument is entirely fatuous. Investigating a strata of fossilised shells
> in Lyme Regis Bay, I won't ever come accros an intellectual pattern and cry
> out to my colleague: 'hey, look, I found an intellectual pattern and it's
> over a hundred million years old!'.
Perhaps not a hundred million years old, but several thousand years ago, some
cavemen carved their thoughts about their latest successful hunt on the wall
of their cave. Not many, but perhaps you?, would deny that such carvings was
inspired by someone quite capable of intellectual patterns.
> No intellectual pattern sits in the
> dark for a hundred million years waiting for an observant beachcomber. What
> sits inside that rock for millions of years waiting to fall out is not an
> intellectual pattern but something to which we *apply* intellectual
> patterns. I do feel like I'm stating the obvious here.
No, there's nothing obvious about it, quite the contrary. May I ask you what
you think about your own memory about things that happened a minute ago? An
hour ago? Ten years ago? If I read you correctly, are these memories also
just something to which you apply your intellectual patterns when you're
remembering them?
> I'm not a dualist about substance, in just the same way that Prisig isn't a
> Dualist about substance. He is a kind of dualist, as am I, because we both
> divide the world into static patterns (my all embracing level of
> intellectual stuff) and dynamic quality. But this is no mind/matter
> dualism, because the mind/matter dualism is a dualism of substance. As I am
> at a loss to understand your point, it is probably better if I shut up and
> invite you to explain yourself.
It's not your static/dynamic split that's the problem, it's your division
of the static side into intellectual/non-intellectual that resembles the
mind/matter split.
> I wonder whether your point is that I attribute some real and fundamental
> existence to consciousness, the creator-intellect, and that Prisig doesn't
> do this? So that whereas Prisig has a two-way division, I break things up
> three ways - Is that your point? Well if that is your veiw of Prisig, I
> think it is wrong. The static/dynamic division is intended as a division of
> the *experienced* world, and the Subject-Object metaphysics he opposes is
> also a metaphysics of the experienced word: paradigmatically of the world
> availiable to scientific study. It was quite apparent in my reading of both
> books that Prisig attributes important being and agency to the
> *experiencer*
No! Now, you're back into experiencer=mind vs. experienced world=matter.
In the MoQ, both sides of each experience are experiencers. Or, as I put it
in my last post, The subject side is only the subject side from the
subjects' point of view, it's the object side from the other side's point of
view.
Magnus
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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