[MD] Kant's Motorcycle

[david buchanan]

LARAMIE quoted Ken Wilber, Up From Eden; Pg. 344 and then said:
I'm sure this is not your intention, Dave, but we need to be careful not to 
support evolutionary regression.  The "assumptions of SOM" are necessary if 
we are to evolve from prerational to transrational.

dmb says:
I'm a big fan of Wilber and I think he's in agreement with Pirsig on this. 
In Lila he talks about how the hippies confused dynamic quality and 
biological quality in the popular versions of Zen. He talks about how the 
intellectuals took sides with biology against social level values. Marx and 
Freud and Darwin were all part of the storm. Basically, in ordinary 
language, these guys are saying that beauty and sensuality and pleasure are 
not to be confused with spiritual bliss or hedonism with freedom. I think 
that's what Pirsig's code of Art is all about. In terms of personal 
development the pure experience or Dynamic Quality that I'm talking about 
here is known by infants and by Zen Masters, but babies aren't enlightened 
because one has to have a mind before it can be blown, if you will. I mean, 
that is the starkest example I can imagine. Going back to infancy would be 
as regressive as it gets.

The only thing I might disagree about is the idea that SOM is needed to 
prevent degeneration. In fact, I think Pirsig makes a pretty good case that 
SOM is the source of the problem. Well, more specifically the problem is 
positivistic materalism, scientific materialism. But this has been quite 
dominant and is more like the epitome of SOM rather than just a species of 
it.

But I have to point out that this isn't really relevant to radical 
empiricism. I mean, you're right but on a different topic entirely. Here we 
are talking about a theory of knowledge, an epistemological position. Its 
about the relationship between the empiricism of pragmatism and almost every 
other school of thought including the dominant one. This is how Pirsig goes 
after the amoral rationality underlying these problems, but the problems are 
better addressed after the structure of the MOQ, with its levels and moral 
codes. All that is a few miles down the road, topic wise.

Thanks.
dmb

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