[MD] Metaphysics

[Andre Broersen]

Marsha to Steve:
You are satisfied with the MoQ as a theory.  I am satisfied with the
MoQ representing insight and experience.  I do not know if what Bo
says is based on experience or not.  For me, Quality IS reality;
Quality being unpatterned experience and patterned experience.  So
maybe the MoQ is both theory and experience.

Andre:
I think you are spot on Marsha, and Steve keeps voicing what many on
this discuss are voicing...the gap, the unbridgeable separation of
theory and experience i.e. the M and the Q. (A variant on the
Mind/Matter issue).

I came across the following last night ( a little bit of transposition
and you'll recognise it as refering to the heart of the matter under
discussion:

'The Protestant preacher, in repeating the old Christian doctrines of
the immortality of the soul, the divinity of Christ, the Fatherhood of
God, and the Trinity, has been even more guilty of the use of
hocus-pocus and of idolatry. For hocus-pocus and idolatry consist in
using the word and the symbol and repeating and worshipping it instead
of referring to and worshipping that which it symbolizes. When modern
Protestant preachers utter these traditional Christian doctrines,
which they have really inherited from the Roman Catholic, medieval
world, and suppose that their statements will take on meaning if they
are merely repeated often enough, without going on to develop a
theology and an empirically grounded scientific philosophy which gives
them content and meaning in terms of present-day knowledge, it is they
who are the real idolators. For they are giving us the symbols without
specifying anything for them to symbolize. This is idolatry, pure and
unadulterated; it is also hocus-pocus.' ( Northrop, Meeting of East
and West, p286)

The 'M' of the MoQ is filled with content and meaning by Pirsig
himself, which, as he has stated is no papal bull. It is an
'empirically grounded scientific philosophy' reflecting Quality
(Reality). No need to 'believe' in Quality! What a farce. It can be
apprehended immediately and verified scientifically any time. The MoQ
symbolises DQ/SQ directly.

Some even dare to suggest that the Quality Pirsig refers to is HIS
Quality, HIS idea. Christ almighty, how silly can you get!

And poor Bodvar has had to endure this SOM grounded confusion with
most MD subscribers for so long.

Once you accept the DQ/SQ symbolism all sorts of problems and
obstacles disappear... and even Pirsig's seeming contradictory
statements can be understood. Not that I have done so with all of
them. Just some. (e.g. the one in the Baggini interview). It is as
clear as day.

Cheers
Andre


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