[MD] Terry Eagleton on Dawkin's God Delusion

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Case

On 27 Jan. you wrote:

> [Case]
> I do not reject SOM at all, as a way of seeing the world. The attempt
> to eliminate it seem weak to me. Sure I can have this marvelous
> feeling of oneness. 

If you don't have trouble with the SOM I envy you, but it's like 
watching children knowing that their confidence is unfounded. 
Nothing personal, just metaphor  ;-) 

> But you can have one too and One as I may be, I do
> not have access to your oneness. But I think I would take it even a
> step further in that there is only one subject; in my case me. I am
> the only subject in my little SOM world.  

IMO it's not mystical experiences that leads to doubt about SOM 
- or the mind/matter world as I knew it before Pirsig) but the fact 
that it is no stable foundation for reality - if one is of the unlucky 
kind that craves such. I did and my obsession ended in an 
experience, far from ecstatic, rather one that can be compared to 
what earthquake victims must feel when the ground gives way 
and I had some bad time afterwards lasting for many years. It's 
now difficult to recall the reasoning, but what's for sure is that 
when I found my first copy of ZMM I felt that I had met an even 
more reason-craving person.  

> You are an object. Often so
> am I as I objectify my past deeds or look at my hand which is
> sometimes me and when making typos is definitely other. But the
> fundamental irresolvable problem of philosophy for me remains
> solipsism. In my view it can only be rejected as a matter of faith.

This sounds familiar, but as difficult it is to recall my own 
reasoning, is it to tune in on your wavelength, but allow me to 
drone on. What first caught my attention were the campsite talks 
about "trashing reason", but it was when Pirsig began to tell about 
young Phaedrus' school days and his "endless-numbers-of-
hypotheses-fitting-any-phenomenon" insight that goose-flesh 
rose, because this fitted my own "experience". Not the same 
wording, but I recognized it immediately.           

> Pirsig casts SOM in a different light but he does not eliminate it.

In ZMM he eliminates it as metaphysically valid and that is what 
counts, all in all it was that book's use of the metaphysics term 
that became the second gooseflesh-rise experience. That the 
mind/matter chasm was something that had entered existence at 
some particular time in history, replacing another metaphysics  
had never occurred to me, being dead sure that this was the way 
reality was assembled. And the rest was plain going: His showing 
that "intellect" is the mind/matter "prism" (in the proto-moq), 
everything excited me greatly and I also sensed that this was not 
the last of this mysterious Pirsig.     

When LILA arrived many years later I at first grabbed without 
reservations, but the intellectual level began to trouble me 
because it differed from Phaedrus radical and Gordian Knot 
solution. I saw more flaws emerging from that particular point. 
For instance Pirsig's way of "encasing SOM" - you know the two 
lower levels being "objects/objective" and the upper two 
"subjects/subjective". OK as a non-moqist it's not your big 
interest.    

> But don't get me started on Nature versus Nurture.

Is that your favorite topic? At least it's another S/O offshoot that - 
like them all - at first glance looks patent, but upon examination 
collapses. As said many times have I read about 
"philosophologists" declaring that human beings are a mixture of 
both, our genes disposition us for success/failure at some 
favorable/unfavorable social condition - very much like Darwin's 
evolution, but no sooner is this declared before the debate starts 
of what part dominates .. exactly as the evolution debate.    

> My point about philosophy's need to import ethic was only that ethics
> are hard to formulate rationally; probably because they are so easy to
> refute rationally. Ethics demand a degree of arbitrary setting of
> rules and philosophy distains the arbitrary. It is easier just to
> dispense with the rationalizations and say do it this way or else...

Seems like you have (had) some insight of your own that butts 
against S/O-rationality. Arbitrary setting of rules? Do you mean 
(for example) that the ethics for a cannibal tribe (if there are any 
left) differs from those of our "civilization"? The MOQ explains 
these enigmas and a lot more.       

Bo