[MD] Natural or supernatural?

[david buchanan]

David M. asked dmb:
Would a design for a boat be an actual boat?

dmb says:
Of course not. Designs are actual designs and boats are actual boats. They 
are two different things. After you've built your boat, you can sail with 
the blueprints in your hand if you like.

David M. asked the old bruiser:
If DQ is actual why is Mr Pirsig so cautious about defining it?

dmb says:
It can't be defined because definitions are intellectual distinctions while 
DQ is the pre-intellectual experience. The fact that it is an experience is 
also the sense in which it is actual. Its an actual experience, a reality 
known through non-intellectual means.

David M. said to Mr. Knowitall:
...DQ is dynamic, it brings something extra to the process, it is not what 
went before. What does it bring? Where does it bring it from if it was not 
available before and is not the same again?

dmb says:
Huh? I don't see DQ as coming from some other place or anything like that. 
Here you make it seem like some Platonic realm where the future waits to be 
exported. New forms emerge in the evolutionary process all up and down the 
scale, but I really don't see the need to think that these emergent 
realities are somehow pre-figured by DQ.

David M. said to Mr. Wowless:
I am suggesting a natural supernaturalism as Thomas Carlyle put it.

dmb says:
And I'm suggesting that this is quasi-theological nonsense.

David M. said:
I don't think any god parted any red seas. But every emerging pattern is a 
little DQ miracle. Its natural yet exceeding the actual, I thought that's 
what DQ did. Maybe your DQ is a kind of mechanism? Or have I got you wrong 
and you agree with me?

dmb says:
DQ is some kind of mechanism? I never said anything remotely like that. In 
any case, the problem I see here is that you're equating terms that can't 
logically be equated. And, like Carlyle's 'natural supernaturalism', you're 
simply contradicting yourself. I mean, if every emerging pattern is a little 
miracle, then its not natural. You seem to think that the evolutionary 
process itself is a miracle, and yet this theory is based on what has been 
observed in nature. I don't think building boats is a miracle either.

David M said to dmb:
Your shot......

dmb says:
Okay. Thanks. I'll take an Irish whiskey.

P.S. Booze doesn't grow on trees, therefore it is a miracle.

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