[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[Ian Glendinning]

Ron,

But the reason (SOMist intellectual artefact) at the start of your
piece is a different "reason" entirely from the expanded reason at the
end ... despite you (and I) happily using the same word.

Ian

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 4:10 PM, X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> [Robert Pirsig]
> I think, furthermore, that all his metaphysical mountain climbing did
> absolutely nothing to further either our understanding of what Quality is or
> of what the Tao is. Not a thing.
> That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of what he thought and said, but
> it isn't. I think it's a statement he would have agreed with himself, since
> any description of Quality is a kind of definition and must therefore fall
> short of its mark. I think he might even have said that statements of the
> kind he had made, which fall short of their mark, are even worse than no
> statement at all, since they can be easily mistaken for truth and thus
> retard an understanding of Quality.
> No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason. He
> showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have
> previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational.
>
> [Krimel]
> Notice that refrain? Yet some are convinced that after doing nothing for the
> Tao in his first book, Pirsig wrote a second to demolish it.
>
> I think not. I think he proceeds in order to benefit reason, or as James
> would put it conceptualization. That is, chopping the world into measurable
> parts. But he reiterates in Lila no metaphysics can to anything for the Tao.
> Not a thing.
>
> As he points out we are overwhelmed by "irrational elements crying for
> assimilation." This is an important point amplified by Dan Ariely and the
> behavioral economists. We are at our core irrational. But irrational does
> not mean incoherent or even incorrect. It means other than rational;
> nonalgorithic. We do not navigate our lives with reason. Reason itself
> emerges as an artifact, as a technique, as a process for assimilating the
> irrational. But reason does nothing for the Tao, or for Quality. Not a
> thing.
>
> [Ron sez]
> I have to disagree with that and here is why:
> Although reason is indeed an artifact and comes posterior in experience it is also
> helpful to see it as an evolutionary extension in the navigation of our lives. reason
> improves our lives, it makes them better. Therefore it most certainly improves
> the tao.
> Rendering the unintelligible intelligible was considered the operation of the divine
> by the ancient Greeks and infered (to them) a hint at the nature of the dynamic.
> The arguement was not about if something "is" or "is not" but rather what held
> the most meaning in experience.
>
> The question to ask, when we inquire into whether or not reason does anything
> for Quality is this: What does it mean to live a "good" life?
>
> In the end I think this becomes the point and conclusion of Pirsigs aim, he improves
> Quality by expanding and clarifying reason. Or why else get involved.
>
>
>
>
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