[MD] killing truth, again

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:


I have stated many times that I do not label 'truth' wrong, or bad, or "reject it."  I have nothing to say about 'truth'.  The idea of truth does not interest me. So while I concede that there is nothing inherently bad with the intellectual static pattern of value labeled 'truth', neither is there anything inherently wrong with my finding it more useful to consider objects of knowledge (stuff in the encyclopedia) _patterns_ rather than truths. ...


dmb says:

Patterns RATHER than truth? Since Pirsig defines pragmatic truth as a static intellectual pattern, this claim is contradictory nonsense. "Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality." Your claim directly contradicts the textual evidence AND, what's even worse, it defies the most basic logic. To say you prefer patterns rather than truths is like saying you prefer the MOQ rather than the MOQ. This claim makes no sense at all and only serves to show how confused you are.
You apathetic attitude also defies the textual evidence...
"A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself."

"I talked about caring the first day and then realized I couldn't say anything meaningful about caring until its inverse side, Quality, is understood. I think it's important now to tie care to Quality by pointing out that care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of Quality." (ZAMM 275)

"To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they're doing, but more than this - there's a kind of inner peace of mind that isn't contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there is no leader and no follower... The kind of mechanic I'm talking about doesn't make this separation. One says of him that he is 'interested' in what he's doing, that he's 'involved' in his work. What produces this involvement is, at the cutting edge of consciousness, an absence of any sense of separateness of subject and object. ...When one isn't dominated by feelings of separateness form what he's working on, the one can be said to 'care' about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself." (ZAMM 296-7)

So, when Marsha says she "has nothing to say about truth" and when she says "the idea of truth does not interest me", she is telling us that she doesn't care what Pirsig says, ironically, about caring. And this carelessness is undoubtedly the main reason that she keeps posting such incoherent drivel.