[MD] Natural or supernatural?

[David M]

Hi DMB

The book you really need to read is this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grammars-Creation-George-Steiner/dp/0571206816/sr=1-4/qid=1158857362/ref=sr_1_4/026-0953140-6169256?ie=UTF8&s=books

and Mr Pirsig owes quite a lot to this guy as you should know.

But let me try another angle or two:

What about all the boats you don't build but could have?
Better still lets say cars. What about the cars that we could
have built, far less polluting cars perhaps. A real, possible,
important and missed opportunity but certainly not actual.

A transcendental possibility. Well you can drop transcendental
if you like because all this has ever referred to is the reality
of DQ, i.e. its vast gift of possibility and capacity to pour forth
new forms.

Equally, I would agree, creativity is not something that transcends
experience it is at the heart of experience of course, experience can
be divided into DQ and SQ for us Pirsigians. Of course, experience
transcends what is merely actual. How else did Beethoven give us
his nine symphonies. Yet think of all the others he was capable of
writing and did not have time to. And, equally,what else is Beethoven's
creativity other than all the symphonies he choose not to write because
they were not what he wanted to write. Every note is a rejection of all
the possible notes available that were the wrong notes, yet nonetheless
possible notes.

Sartre's favorite example of the significance of the possible that is not
actual is the experience of going to meet a friend who does not turn up at 
the bar.
This creates an experience of the absence of the friend,
your experience is simply of an empty bar, but its experienced meaning is 
captured
in what was possible but not actual.

For me, existence is this very journey through the possible, what we call 
actual
is simply the path and journey you are able to undertake.

What is abstract mathematics if not an exploration of the possible?

What is god other than the formless nothing that is all potential and 
nothing
actual? Which is not a conception Plato would have been too comfortable
with.

Hope you enjoyed your possible but not actual whiskey
David M



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 2:30 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Natural or supernatural?


> 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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