What, Why & How do we Know ?
This is a 2023 Annotation of a 2005 paper prepared originally for the Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). The text is unchanged except for correcting a few obvious typos and formatting errors, and to keep me honest the original “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid” remains here complete with old broken … Continue reading “Zero to Pirsig”
Iain McGilchrist’s film “The Divided Brain” was released last week. The film one half of your brain doesn’t want you to see. An hour and a quarter of anyone’s time well spent. [Full disclosure: I have written positively about McGilchrist’s work before, and contributed to crowdfunding of the film project.] “The halves of our brain … Continue reading “The Divided Brain – a Director’s Cut”
This is really just a riff on some coincidental connections about what needs to happen around the fallout from #EURef (the result of which will finally be announced tomorrow morning.) Not a high profile celebrity these days I guess, so I’d no reason to know if George Steiner was dead or alive, it hadn’t occurred to me … Continue reading “Older US Views of European Union”
(Editorial Note : This paper was originally prepared for the 2005 Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). It is a personal non-technical view of the MoQ, and indeed the first part of paper is an entirely subjective and naive account of the author’s “thought journey” that led to reading Pirsig … Continue reading “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid”
Finished Thoreau’s Walden, reading it mainly to and from work on the bus. (I mentioned earlier the coincidence that it was the subject of BBC’s “In Our Time” recently too, just as I had unpacked the book from our recent relocation onto the bed-side cabinet – so a comprehensive re-read was in order.) A little … Continue reading “On Walden Pond”
“Arrive Without Travelling” (AWT) is the first in a series of documentary films by Anthony McWatt about the work of Robert M Pirsig. Ant is to be congratulated on achieving his debut film-making milestone, the culmination of his own determined journey down a long and winding road, paved with intentions of many kinds. [Post Note: The 2nd part “On The Road … Continue reading “Arrive Without Travelling”
Terry Bristol, Director of ISEPP (University of Oregon) introduced the concept of reality as Engineering into the Friends of Wisdom environment, which caught my imagination, because I’m an engineer and came to this space through engineering. (Notice, Linus Pauling and Bob Ulanowizc connections BTW.) And, having been inflicted by Pirsigian Metaphysics of Quality before noticing … Continue reading “Engineering at the Dawn of Time ?”
Thanks to David Morey over at MoQ-Discuss for picking up these links to papers mentioning Pirsig’s work. (I’m guessing partly prompted by the observations from Sam and Ant about the Ram-Prasad “Great Divide” article decrying the dearth of links between Eastern and Western philosophy – lets’ not overlook Pirsig and Northrop.) A Hubert Dreyfus paper … Continue reading “Wow, it’s full of holes.”