Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:25:59 +0100
Wed, 04 Mar 1998 00:13:50 +0000
Ant McWatt wrote (to Donald T Palmgren mainly):
>>> = quotation of yours truly
>> = Donny
> = Anthony
> > > "In the objective world there are no qualities, only
> > > quantities: sight-colours are various wavelengths of the
> > > electromagnetic spectrum; sound-music are air pressure
> > > waves; smell-odours are molecular configurations, as is
> > > taste and touches are pressure sensation. No where out
> > > there is quality (or values) to be found.
> > Let's be careful here about confusing two sense of the word
> > "quality." (P. points out this distinction in ZMM) It can mean "good" or
> > "excelent" (this becomes the capital Q). But it also can mean "property"
> Yes, I realise that. Qualities in terms of values are also
> usually classified as subjective. Unfortunately, the term
> "quality" can be ambiguous in this respect.
Right Anthony! (Donny seems oblivious to what the MOQ is about :-))
The distinction between the PROPERTIES and the "ding an
sich", and also between the various qualities like VALUE of a healthy
body, the MORAL of proper behaviour and the GOOD of a noble mind -
plus a million other expressions - is the very ambiguity (the chief
platypus) that Pirsig set out to remedy. Value is all there is;
there are no things possessing qualities. 'Things' are Inorganic
Patterns of Value, but the particular shirt of Donny's may become
part of his Biological value dimension (keeps him warm), as it can
become an ingredient of his Social dimension (gives him status) as
well as existing in his Intellectual Value dimension (as an
individual of the species "shirt" of the phylum "garment" of the
kingdom "cloth"). All is good, bad or "mu" value viewed from each
Quality Pattern's point of view, and as humans focus mostly in the
Intellect the world is an intellectual construct.
What Donny says about P pointing out the distinction in ZMM was
the very PROBLEM that faced him. It is in LILA he presents the
solution.
(......after a passage where I demonstrated the impossibility
of the mind/body idea (SOM))
> > And not remotly a new one! That's been the critique of Cartisan
> > M-B duality since he came up w/ the thing. That's why it's so populer to
> > flee to either M or B and call the other an illusion or some-such
> > (Idealism: Nothing is spacially extended. Positivism -- what I call
> > "science apolagetics": Nothing is not spacialy extended.) But this is the
> > same metaphysical delima that the German Idealist tackeled.
> The Mind/body problem is an old one. What is impressive
> about Pirsig`s MOQ is that it avoids both the mind and/or
> body options. At the end of part two of ZMM, the narrator
> mentions Phaedrus`s Copernican Revolution with the example
> of Kant`s fitting of the "objective" world with our sensory
> capabilities and not the other way round as previously
> attempted (and as you`ve also recently mentioned). What
> Pirsig does, of course is to put subjects and objects in
> terms of values and not the other way round (as many, if
> not all, philosophers have been doing). Whether Pirsig`s
> Copernican Revolution is as great as Kant`s is a debatable
> point though I think it will become more appreciated as
> time goes on.
Quite right Anthony, I will only add this. You are both correct in
saying that the Mind/Body it isn't new. It's older than Descartes
too. It is as old as SOM itself, but after Descartes the absurdity
became painfully visible and the empiricists started to draw
conclusions to lengths that alarmed Kant who set out to save
reason against their "pure" reason. The rest is well known.
> > Now if you want -- just for closure -- I can probly wrap up the
> > rest of German Idealism's life (Ficht, Schelling and Hegel) in two more
> > posts. Of course this would be ultra-ultra condensed but it might, sort of
> > let you see (or sense) what it was about Hegel that let him put such a
> > frighteningly original spin on metaphysics. Interested?
> I certainly would be. I also agree with you that Kant
> would have tended to favour the MOQ rather than SOM
> (as it stands today).
Donny
I attach something about what you said in another post about
the "Geist" term of German. As a Norwegian with a language heavily
German-related (through Danish influence) I know the geist/mind
distinction. There are two kinds of "mind": Sinn and Geist. The
former means generally what goes on on the subjective plane, the
latter a more noble kind (geistlichÎrgy). Perhaps more as "spirit",
but not quite. It's not ghost. Phew!
But I think you've got the "reciprocity" wrong. That is the objective
(Gegenstände) in German; that which stands opposite the subject.
Bo
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