[MD] Tit's

[Krimel]

Marsha,
There are plenty of reasons why misery persists in the modern world that
have nothing to do with science. Science provides us with unprecedented
opportunities to remake the world in our own images. As I have said before
we are rapidly acquiring godlike powers and it is frequently disappointing
to see how we use them. There is little doubt that the past century was the
bloodiest in history as a result of the application of technology to the
making of war. But it is also true that that science has extended average
life expectancy and provided more food for more people than ever before. I
do not doubt that most of us find our experience with medical technology
trying but then they also enable many of us to continue having experiences
we would not other wise be able to have. I would also suggest that most of
your own grievances with medicine at least as you have described them
previously are not with science but with the politics and economics of the
medical establishment. It is their use of technology not the technology
itself.

Ham refuses to address the many points I have raised about his affection of
philosophical sophistication. So I have little to say about his third person
allusions to my posts. But I would point out for your benefits that Pirsig
advocates an expanded view of empiricism. He also at some point advocates a
kind of scientific idealism. At this point I would mention that he is
acknowledging the essential monistic quality of science. Is the quarrel then
really over whether to describe the undefinable monism as idealistic or
materialistic? Is this the kind over meaningless discourse that Wittgenstein
has reduced philosophy too? I would say how sad is that?

I would also insist that the Value of science is its refusal to make
dogmatic claims about nature. Rather it constantly scrutinizes and questions
its assumptions and its findings.

You seem repeatedly concerned that all of this or all of that is JUST a
bunch of conceptual patterns. The implication is that any such set of
conceptual patterns is some how worthless at best and evil at worst. As I
have said previously even Buddhists are not so much opposed to patterns or
conceptualization as they are to the clinging to such patterns. Desire is
the cause of suffering even the desire to be free of conceptualization. 

I would add that some patterns are built into us. Our experiences of
pleasure and pain result from the patterns passed down to us from our
ancestors in our genetic code. Others we acquire through the process of
living. I believe that what Pirsig enjoins us to do is to understand that
our conceptions of the world from moment to moment are Kulpian illusions;
not hallucinations so much as provisional orderings of experience that can
and sometimes are different from moment to moment. They are the meaning that
we make out of the patterns that we have had and are having.