34 : Dynamic Quality
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If you find yourself having a mental orgasm when you read today’s post, you’re doing it right.
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33 : Natural Mystic
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This anecdote about a Zuni Indian turns out to be a real lightbulb moment for comprehending the Metaphysics of Quality. Continued from previous post.
Read More32 : The First Division
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In any hierarchy of metaphysical classification the most important division is the first one, for this division dominates everything beneath it. If this first division is bad there is no way you can ever build a really good system of classification around it.
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23 : What is Metaphysics?
/These next few selections are from Robert Pirsig’s follow up to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila that came about about 15 years later. It took me a while to read this second book but when I did, I wish I’d read it earlier. We’re still laying down the foundation for our pyramid of philosophy, and these are some crucial limestone blocks. Into the Mystics we go.
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21 : Stuckness Part 2/3
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This is Super Dank High-Grade Knowledge Extract. Read this more than once.
Read More20 : Stuckness Part 1/3
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Where do hypotheses comes from? Think about it. Really think about it. What part of the scientific method tells you were to look for new hypotheses to test? This may seem like a minor oversight, but it isn’t. It’s actually a glaring blind spot, a vast chasm in the mountain of rationality itself. This is Part 1 of 3, and if you figure this out, you’ll never run out of new hypotheses again.
Read MoreTwelve : What is Quality?
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This may sound like a simple question at first, but if you start tapping on Quality with your analytical chisel, you’ll be amazed how unsimple it can be. Quality, what the hell is it?
Read MoreEleven : Your Analytical Knife
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I should talk now about Phædrus' (analytical) knife. It'll help understand some of the things we talked about.
Read MoreNine : The Classic/Romantic Dichotomy
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As promised, here is the key to the Copernican Revolution we were talking about earlier. If you can wrap your head around what Robert Pirsig is talking about here, underlying form vs. immediate appearance and the relationship between the them, you will start to look at the world in a completely different way than you’re probably used to. This is how we begin to transcend the limitations of the Cartesian split that seems to be embedded in the modern zeitgeist. This is how we begin to understand Quality.
Read MoreFive : Kant’s Copernican Revolution
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How do we know the things we know? Does all knowledge come through our senses? If not exclusively our senses, where? What is more real, the idea of a chair or the physical chair you’re sitting on right now? What is the nature of “substance”? Hume, Kant, empiricism, paradox, and the all important a priori motorcycle. There’s a lot to unpack today.
Read MoreFour : The High Country of the Mind
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We’re going to make a summit attempt right here in the beginning so we can get a lay of the land and have a better sense of what reality looks like from a vantage point. These next couple posts also serve as a crash course in the history of western philosophy. We’ll start abstract and then get concrete, as best we can. This is the relationship between the High Country of the Mind and material reality that we’re starting to get used to.
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Two : Chautauqua
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“What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.”
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