[MD] Chairness

[118]

Hi Carl,

Your question is a good one, and often a central theme in this forum.
Is it possible to look from the outside in?  How does one encompass
ones thinking with more thinking?  Can a finger point at itself?  In
my opinion, if one is looking for truth, then it cannot be found in
this way.  If one is seeking to develop rhetoric, then anything is
possible.  A description of reality is just that, a description, a
painting or song.  Can the painting be used to paint itself?  Well,
there have been analogies presented of a map within a map (within a
map..)  which creates a similar paradox.  There is the endless
succession of reflections of mirrors facing themselves.  Can we
encompass everything and still be a part of it?  This quandary is seen
in quantum mechanics where it is impossible to separate the experiment
from the experimenter.  It is all one big dance that gets entangled,
and we create more than we find.

My opinion is that your inquiry is taking the wrong perspective.  It
is putting Truth above Quality.  How can we know what is Really Going
On, when we are creating such a thing?  Understanding is a human
attribute, a human creation.  So, the described fork from one of
sophistry to one of truth as presented in ZMM, in Greece, can perhaps
be seen as one branch of thought.  It certainly has its merits, since
if we feel we are looking for something real, we put forward more
effort.  However, from the Quality perspective (again, in my opinion),
the emphasis is more on creation.  The sophists could create or deny
any truth they wanted to, through rhetoric and paradoxes, not unlike
good lawyers.  Therefore it is more about the quality of the creation
than the truth behind it.  I am not saying that we create what exists,
we just create our understanding of such.  That is metaphysics.

Cheers,
Mark

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 3:23 AM, Carl Thames <cthames at centurytel.net> wrote:
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> Okay, I've read probably a thousand messages, and still have another thousand to go before I catch up completely, but I've got a nagging questions that's bugging me. I have read both ZAMM and Lila, and still have the question.
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> Specifically: I think I understand Pirsig's concept of quality. It's not a value judgement, it's a state of being. That thing you sit on is a chair. We know it's a chair because we've all gotten together and agreed that it's a chair. It's inherent quality is that of a chair. I has chair-ness. That is a static quality, as I understand it. It won't change. If we break it, it's still a chair, but it's a 'broken' chair.
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> A human has the same quality, in that a human is a human. We've all gotten together and agreed that what we call human has human qualities. What we call human has inherent qualities that we identify as human.
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> Then comes metaphysics. That, by definition, is beyond physics. Physics exists to describe or define those materail objects that exist in our reality. Meta is supposed to go beyond that. Okay. Here's the problem. No matter what we do to a chair, short of destroying it completely, it's still a chair. How do we get beyond that quality of chairness? How do we get beyond that quality of human-ness? Is it possible?
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> I guess what I'm really asking is whether or not the term "meta" logically applies here. Is it possible? Are we applying a value judgement to something basic? Granted, we can differentiate between a throne and a camp chair, like we can differentiate between Ghandi and a street thug, but aren't those simply value judgements that have nothing to do with their inate quality?
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> I'm trying to get beyond the linguistics here. Is THAT possible?
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