[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[kgt83dr at yahoo.com]

Matt,
  
The impetus for my question on 20 February, "Why do you say there is
no interaction between the actual or static and the possible or dynamic?"
was the following remark you posted on 19 February.
  
     The only thing I want to warn against is thinking that there are
     interactions occuring across this boundary between the actual and
     the possible, static patterns and DQ.  The actual, static patterns,
     simply push back the boundaries, unfold into the possible's space.
  
I guess it was the warning that got my attention.  But it's the idea that 
  there are impenetrable boundaries that really interests me.  I'd like to
hear more.  The engineer in me wonders if this boundary is anything like
an entropy boundary.
  
Thanks for the response you posted on 21 February.  You ended that
message by writing,
  
     As I see it, the connection between actual and possible is simply that
     of life living.  What is here, right now, is actual and what is in the
     future is possible.  I'm not sure what more connection we need (after
     disposing of the free will/determinism debate).  And this is kinda' like
     the image Pirsig offers in ZMM of the train and the Quality track,
     which is then transformed into his SODV picture of static patterns
     swimming in DQ.  If this is all that is meant by "interaction" then that
     seems fine to me.
  
This sounds right to me.  But then you wrote,
  
     When I think "interaction," I think of discernible relationships
     between two somethings.  But we can't have a relationship with the
     possible, DQ, or Being because all three, under this reading, are
     synonymous with the Buddhist's Nothingness.  They are no-thing, not
     a "something" at all, and so we shouldn't think of having relationships
     to them, at least not relationships or interactions that are at all
     analogous to the kinds of relationships we normally understand.
  
And this doesn't sound right to me.  What I hear you saying is that
subjects and objects come first, relationships follow.  What if it were the
other way round.  What if the interaction was primary?
  
If Quality is seen as the source of all things, and if Quality is another
way of talking about value, and if value is just another way of talking
about meaning, and if meaning is derived from interactions then it would
seem to me to be logical to say one can interact with the source of all
things.
  
What do you think?
  
Thanks.
   
  
Kevin

		
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