[MD] Philosophy and Philosophology

[Andre Broersen]

John to Bodvar:
Here is something you've been explaining for a long time, and yet somehow
I've had great difficulty in following you.  But as I've gone along and
investigated the MoQ on my own, I've found myself at times starting to come
to some conclusions which have made me think, "This sounds like what Bodvar
has been asserting."
So we shall see where my rollercoaster train of thought leads and if I
end up on the same track.

Andre:
Hello John, Bodvar, Platt and All.

I second the sentiments above John and what Bodvar says but it doesn't
resonate with me either...I hear what B says but it doesn't gel.
Anyway, having just read Platt's post here is the following from ZMM:

'Al the time we are aware of millions of things around us...aware of these
things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or
unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not
possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our
mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From
all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness
is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates
it. We take a handfull of sand from the endless landscape of awareness
around us and call that handfull of sand the world.
Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a
process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife'(p 75).
'Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for
sorting and interrelating them'' (the Aristotelian, dialectical method and
clasification?). Romantic understanding is directed toward the handfull of
sand before the sorting begins' (note this is separated from the 'endless
landscape') (ibid,p76)

It appears to me (and please correct me if I am distorting things) that
Pirsig agrees here with Krishnamurti who simply said that consciousness is
its content. Consciousness is all the static stuff you 'know' and feel
and prefer to look at and listen to. Your static patterns of value.

However, as any Buddhist will tell you, there are different levels of
consciousness. Now, before Bodvar suggested to John that consciousness is
yet 'another SOM-generated platypus, the biggest of them all' I was going to
suggest that, at present our 'consciousness' is dominated by S/O
analyses.Which gives us data...bits of knowledge. This has thrown up
platypi, paradoxes.
However,the resolution of these paradoxes allows us to reach a 'higher'
level of consciousness, a higher level of 'understanding', a higher level of
awareness... by going deeper and realising that apparent contradictions in
fact, at this deeper level, complement eachother.
What I am getting at is that standard logical methods, as a tool, have high
intellectual value. However, as a guide to aid our understanding they are
very inadequate. For this you need, as Reanney would have it,
the non-algorithmic, aesthetic approach.

Bodvar, I am real interested in finding out about your views on this
'consciousness' thing arising out of this, as you say mind/matter enigma.

Andre