[MD] Intuition and Intellect, Religion and Science

ngriffis ngriffis at bellsouth.net
Tue Aug 9 12:22:16 PDT 2016


 

Hello All,

 

Nick: Thanks to Horse for the link to Pirsig's letter to Turner

 

> The 'Letter to Paul Turner' from Robert Pirsig can be found at:

 <http://www.moq.org/forum/Pirsig/LetterFromRMPSept2003.html>
http://www.moq.org/forum/Pirsig/LetterFromRMPSept2003.html

 

 

>Tuukka:

 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine)

 

Nick: Thanks, Tuukka. I found this very interesting because it helped with
some MOQ ideas that I am working on.

 

> Craig:

...nor do I know what scrambled eggs taste like to anyone else but me.  But
this doesn't prevent me from knowing all sorts of things about other living
things' experience.  For instance, I know an amoeba doesn't value acid,
because I see it back away. 

 

Nick: I imagine Craig is speaking of the knowing/assuming that comes from
"intuition". 

 

Question: Is not "Intuition" part of our intellect and don't we use
intuition and imagination to bring us towards Quality when we interact with
the inscrutable external? 

 

>Dan:

And yes so then in our quest for knowledge, in any search for knowing, we
are using our senses to make sense of the often-times inscrutable.

Yet that doesn't mean we give up. We simply need to recognize, to realize,
that we are inherently limited in our outlooks upon the world that we
imagine is out there separate and apart from us and yet in a real way is
inside us all, a shared dream, if you will, or nightmare, depending upon of
course our imagination, or lack of it.

 

>Dan:

But anyhow, so far as resolving issues, no, I doubt that's even possible.
Instead, what we ought to be doing, what the MOQ seeks, is to expand our
reach into the unknown, to continue the journey even while knowing there is
no end to the search. That no matter how smart we are or become, what we
know is but a grain of sand upon an endless beach of unknowns.

 

Rumi: "I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your
ocean."

 

Nick: The Toa, Zen, Rumi, Joseph Campbell, and even some of the Christian
philosophers...I cannot help but feel that Quality and the Sacred (Religion)
are interconnected when I read Pirsig and these others.

 

Pirsig ZMM:

 

"No, he (Pheadrus) 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 inassimilable and thus have been considered
irrational. I think it's the overwhelming presence of these irrational
elements crying for assimilation that creates the present bad  quality, the
chaotic, disconnected spirit of  the twentieth  century.  I  want  to  go
at  these  now  in  as  orderly  a manner as possible."

 

"The first step down from Phædrus' statement that ``Quality is the Buddha''

is a statement that such an assertion, if true, provides a rational basis
for a

unification  of  three  areas  of  human  experience  which  are  now
disunified.

These  three  areas  are  Religion,  Art  and  Science.  If  it  can  be
shown  that Quality is the central term of all three, and that this Quality
is not of many

kinds but of one kind only, then it follows that the three disunified areas

have a basis for introconversion." 

 

Question: Did Pirsig want interconversion rather than to use
introconversion. I think, yes.

 

Nick: I realize after finding the above sections (Again, thank you Dan) that
Pirsig introduces parts of Quality through Phaedrus, a person suffering from
irrationality/insanity...(mystical enlightenment?). Previously, I had not
thought about how Pirsig couches Quality in this way: that which Phaedrus
discovered and that which the author picks up and validates. The
un-definable and unknowable parts of Quality...those identities that some
readers intuit between Quality, The Toa, and The Sacred, I think, we get
these from Phaedrus, the crazy guy... do we not? I wonder if Pirsig does
this in order to better accomplish his task of creating MOQ. He has
connected the Sacred with the Mundane for us...something that Science and
Technology had killed, something that organized religions had polluted.
Perhaps, this is the "intro-conversion" / interconversion that Pirsig speaks
of (imho).

 

 

 

 

 




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