[MD] Natural or supernatural?

[Peter Corteen]

Great post, David M.

-Peter

On 21/09/06, David M <davidint at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> 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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