[MD] A problem with the MOQ.

[Tuukka Virtaperko]

Ant, all,

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> Ant McWatt states:
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> Tuukka,
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> Just a
> brief comment about your second problem which I hope is helpful.
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> You state in your “Introduction to the MOQ”:
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> “Including
> Mathematics in the Intellectual Level”
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> In a 2003 letter to Paul Turner,
> Pirsig includes mathematics in the intellectual level of LILA. He writes:
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> '“Intellect” can [...] be defined
> very loosely as the level of independently manipulable signs. Grammar, logic
> and mathematics can be described as the rules of this sign manipulation.'
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> And:
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> '…it seems to me the greatest meaning
> can be given to the intellectual level if it is confined to the skilled
> manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular
> experience and which behave according to rules of their own.'
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> However, the intellectual level
> already contains empirical science. Including mathematics to the intellectual
> level entails that the MOQ fails to distinguish between empirical and normative
> science. This distinction is generally recognized in the philosophy of science.
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> Furthermore, it is unclear how
> theories of empirical science should have no corresponding particular
> experience...
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> Ant McWatt comments:
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> Because theories of empirical
> science are concerned with corresponding experiences that are REPEATED (not
> particular); that is to say “static patterns”. 
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> Towards the end of the Copleston Annotations, Pirsig confirms this:
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> “In the MOQ repeated experience of
> the pattern gives it its “thingness.”  All sorts of ephemera pass in front
> of the scientist’s eye but the patterns he values are those that repeat
> themselves.”
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>

Tuukka:
When Pirsig says, that abstract symbols have no corresponding particular 
experience, does he say that for any reason then? Apparently not, but 
apparently he should have said, that abstract symbols have no 
corresponding repeated experience. However, changing "corresponding 
particular experience" to "corresponding repeated experience" does not 
make the problem I have presented seem any less problematic. It is very 
unclear, how theories of empirical science should have no corresponding 
*repeated* experience, as the whole branch of science is based on such 
experiences.

Best regards,
Tuukka