Keith's Blog

Synesthesia

2006-09-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

I feel I have been almost cheated out of something with this novel. I read and read and plugged away. I looked up this, that, and almost everything I could. I still can't get a good picture of what happens at the climax. I understand what happens in the framework plotline with Chris and father. I don't get the end of Phadreus's studies at University of Chicago and what caused him to lose his mind though. To truly understand why this book is so hard to understand, I have chosen a short 3-4 page example from an area near the most confusing section of the book.

This example when broken down states:

1. Science itself had been shaking in its boots
2. This was because of the proof of a system called Non-Euclidian Geometry.
3. This was born because Euclid's postulate of parallels, which states that through a given point there's not more than one parallel line to a given straight line, is actually not true.
4. These two men by the name of Bolyai and Lobachevski basically prove that the basics of geometry aren't true.
5. Then a man named Riemann also proves it and Albert Einstein goes on to use Riemann's geometric axioms to create the Theory of Relativity.
6. Pirsig then goes on to show how this illustrates that math is not a true or false science but rather a science of convenience.

This 4 page section caused me to pause and reread about 8 times. Then I proceeded to research these proofs by Bolyai and Lobachevski only to find that I didn't understand a scrap of them. I then looked through the works of Einstein, Gauss, and Riemann. These also made no sense. How can a class that is a course requirement to graduate at the Academies be based on something that can be proven completely untrue at its roots? I don't even understand what was proven or not proven. A measly 4 pages took up about 3 hours of research and also bore no fruit of discovery as well.

I did understand the later philosophical part about how science can be convenient basically assuming that both Euclidian and Non-Euclidian math could be proven as true. I then went on to realize that many things are just convenient, like the concept of religion, a lot of astronomy/astro-physics, and the idea of time.

All these realizations jump around the ToK diagram repeatedly. They are basically focused in math. However, the proof of convenience in science affects both human and natural science. It also touches upon reason. This little section puts forth 2 types of reasoning to back up the fact that math and various scientific concepts aren’t really true. They are just all that human’s can come up with to deal with their inadequacies in the search for the truth.

It is quite the conundrum to me. This is especially because I don’t understand it. This concept of dual mathematics theorems really affects the knower as well. As a knower myself, my reasoning is certainly shaken and this releases emotions of confusion and mild irritation. I don’t understand it fully but if what I believe is true then I just want to shake Ms. McCoy and ask her why she is teaching something that is just, in the words of Pirsig, “nothing more than a magician's mumbo jumbo in which belief is sustained purely by faith.”

This is why I don’t comprehend and am starting to despise this book. It also shows why I wish I took a more enthusiastic interest in mathematics.

The Plot

2006-08-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

As I read and reread this novel, I came to realize the end is quite unsettling. The finale of the book terminates with the so called “evil” ghost of Phadreus returning and taking over the body of the narrator. This ghost scared the narrator so much he was willing to send his son Chris back home, sell his motorbike, and check into a local mental hospital. This is a very unsatisfying way to end the book in my opinion.
I realize though that Chris really doesn’t like this new dad and much favored the time when Phadreus was in control. Also, Phadreus, although being proclaimed as a poor scholar, was a visionary. He took these ideas about quality and brought them to lengths that no one had. He challenged his professors, and was an avid researcher. When reexamined from a third-person point of view, Phadreus is a lot more interesting at least.
Then after reading the introduction of another edition to the book, Pirsig proclaims that the truth is that Phadreus is the actual hero who is trying to triumph. This is a observation about the story and is mostly plot related. Although I thought this would be a good example of how emotion really inhibits reason for the knower. A person’s will have obvious emotional responses to certain facts like for example, the fact the narrator is a man trying to win back his son or a scared intellectual trying to rediscover his past. Also the language used by the narrator by to describe Phadreus like “poor scholar” or “unfair student” slants a reader’s reason in describing Phadreus. For the entire time I read the book I sympathized with the narrator and come to realize a problem of knowledge in this emotional tie-down.
Objectivity is the problem. One must remain completely objective and base his conclusion on mostly facts. Descriptions of people can be helpful in alluding to true evils but when someone says something, they are saying it because they have their own agendas. To truly judge any motivations one must remain even-headed and not let emotional responses however personal cloud his judgment.
An example of this that I saw recently was in the movie the Island. It is a complex plot line but the main gist of it has 2 clones trying to escape a secret underground lab and being chased by a special operative assassin. The 2 clones are copies of rich people. If these rich people start to get sick, then they kill the clone and harvest parts. The assassin character realizes that these clones are real people but are treated as sub-humans. This strikes a chord with him because his father was killed in an African genocide because he was declared sub-human. So he reverts on his evil stance and helps all the clones get free. This is a somewhat long-winded example of how one’s personal emotions can affect and cloud their reasoning. This was a good change but it was in fact illogical to the assassin’s original motivations and original instructions.

Writing Skills and Gumption Traps

2006-08-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

Upon finishing the book for the first time, I realize to really understand this novel I would need basic background knowledge of Greek Philosophy. This I do not have, so I feel that some of the more opaque ideas may have been over my head. I intend to re-read the second half of the book to see if I can get anymore out of it.

After completing the book I realize that some criticisms are apparent. The colloquial language used in the book is sometimes very confusing. The main word used to describe the entity most explored in the book is Quality. This term however is not completely accurate because the word “value” may be more suiting. Quality can describe certain tendencies or characteristics of a subject and this definition is not intended by the author. By using the word Quality, the author intends to inquire whether a subject is good or bad. Furthermore in certain places the author uses the term "value" instead of Quality to additionally confuse the reader.

When perusing online reviews of the novel, I noticed a trend that most critics decided that the structure of the work was either brilliantly complex or hopelessly muddled. I came to the conclusion that it is a mix of both. The incorporation of the three separate stories of Phadreus’s descent into madness, Robert’s Chautauqua* about quality, and Robert’s trip west to bond with his adolescent son, is at times very obtusely transitioned. However, I feel that at times the anecdotes about the scenery and the drama with his son can be viewed as a break from the dense analysis of various topics in western philosophy.

*A Chautauqua is what Native Americans held when a tribe had a problem. They met up and discussed it within the elders. This is what the main character calls his reveiw of Quality.

One part I really liked was Pirsig’s analysis of Gumption. In the ToK diagram it would most likely apply to the knower himself but could also apply to all of the Areas of Knowledge too.
Gumption can be roughly defined as a person’s enthusiasm to apply himself to something. Pirsig goes through examples of gumption first and cites a person’s ability to work better after they get back from a fishing trip. They didn’t really do much but sit on a boat but it still has a measurable value in terms of production. He then connects gumption to quality because without gumption there would be no quality. For example, if everyone was burnt-out and not concerned with the quality of their work or life then the world as we know it would fall apart. It isn’t quality itself; it is just a motivator of quality.

Then Pirsig analyzes various conundrums which he calls gumption traps. He divides them first into two categories. The first set are traps which are incurred by external circumstances or what we call setbacks. The second set is traps which we create ourselves. Then he lists numerous examples of both types. One example is that of boredom. This self inflicted trap is confusing because on the surface boredom can seem synonymous with Zen. When everything is out of your mind and you are completely empty, you have achieved Zen. Boredom on the other hand is actually impatience, which is a constant desire to be doing something else. This is not Zen by any means. It advises on what to do when you’re bored and have work to complete. Pirsig’s advice is to either sleep or do some mindless necessary task to get your mind settled.

Pirsig goes on and on like this with other traps like ego and anxiety. I found this ToK related becuase to be able to apply any of the ways of knowing properly like reason or emotion, one must have gumption. The lack of gumption could be considered a problem of knowledge. After all, who cares about knowing anything if you have no enthusiasm for knowledge? All of the gumption traps listed could be problems of knowledge I think. For example, Ego, Anxiety, and Boredom all mar one’s reason if they are present.

I am not sure if this is correct though. I have been struggling with what a problem of knowledge really is and this is the closest thing i could come up with. Problems of knowledge appear to be a big deal on the Tok Essay Rubric and it would be conveniant if a couple were discussed in detail in this novel.

Further Defining of Quality

2006-07-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

The main character in this novel is a man named Robert and he is talking about his prior part of his life when he was a named Phadreus. Phadreus was the one who did all the research, pondering, and defining of Quality. However, something happened to him and his mind went into some sort of shutdown. When he came out of it he found he could recall very little of what headway he made concerning Quality and that he was Phadreus no longer. The book is a story of Robert restructuring his thoughts concerning Quality from the fragments that Phadreus left.

I chose this point to make an entry because a lot of ways of knowing are brought up. At this spot in the novel, Quality has been defined almost outright to Robert.

Reality is a moment of vision before any intellectualization takes place. Quality is the event that occurs when the intellectualization takes place. This explains why it is different for all people. Based on a priori analogues in a human’s mind, there view on a subject’s quality will always be different.

Now for where the ways of knowing fall into place:

This statement is strongly intertwined with the definition of perception and why it is different for all people. Perception is the pre-intellectualization state of vision that is reality and it is the post-intellectualization state of deliberation. This process of assessing quality is perception. It doesn’t have to be assessment quality either, it can be perception of anything that can be considered. With any deliberation process, there is a state of reality and then a state of conclusion. The process in between is perception.

Reason is the intellectualization in this process. All of the a priori analogues that make up a person’s sensibility are applied to the reality at the point of intellectualization. When quality is assessed, a person’s reasoning will affect the outcome of quality.

Language can be one of the things that perception is applied to. The novel gave a great example of how English speaking individuals cannot tell the difference between the Hindi letters da, and dha. This is because we don’t have a priori analogues to sensitize ourselves to their subtle differences. In the same way, Hindi speaking people cannot tell the difference between the Hindi letter da and the English word the. They do not have the a priori analogues to differentiate these sounds.

Emotion is tricky because it is not directly considered by the book. There is the consideration of romanticism that was stated in the previous post but it is not the same as emotion as it is defined today. Emotion is extremely difficult to define when considering quality because it can be pre or post-intellectualization. One may mix in emotions to the reasoning process and therefore skew it. An example of this is when one is having a bad day; they are less likely to be optimistic about the weather if they look up and see a thick cloud cover.

Also however, Emotion can be a totally removed entity from the process of perception. It can be a response. When the reasoning process occurs a conclusion is eventually reached and the matter is settled on what the status of the question is. There also may be a more longstanding, less concrete response arrived at that may be an emotional one. Going with the previously used example of the cloudy day, one may look up at the cloud cover and become ever more depressed because it is a sign that rain is coming.

These are the conclusions I came to when I read the bolded definition of quality and paused to think. I am sure I am rambling now but I have no knowledge of how deep into the author’s language I have submerged myself.

What is quality:

2006-07-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

In the novel, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," there is a lengthy analysis of quality in general. One of the characters, Phadreus, gives his class of college students an assignment to write a paper on "what is quality?" The students in this class found this extremely difficult apparently.

I thought this would be a good exercise for me to undertake considering quality heavily influences the knower and his ways of knowing. Quality is a strong exercise of perception. This perception of quality also uses reason to determine the nature of the quality.

I also thought that perhaps language limits the assessment of quality in that taciturn or unwordable characteristics of an item may go unexpressed due to limitations in language. There are countless times when one is trying to explain his feelings on why something is better than another and cant put it into words. It may not always be his/her fault; it may be his or her language's fault. Speaking of feelings, emotion also ties strongly into the romantic understanding of the quality of an object. I will expound on this later.

I took on this exercise and after a couple of hours; I realized that this was quite the task. This is what i came up with as a definition for quality. I used previous knowledge of topics in the book to aid me.

"Quality is description. It is not object or subject but is one of the relationships that lie between. It can be different to all people but in certain cases it is universally the same.

The problems with the concept of universality concerning quality are that there are two types of quality. As described earlier in the novel, there are two forms of understanding, classical and romantic. The book takes an example of a person trying to perceive a handful of grains of sand. “Classical understanding is concerned with the grains and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before a sorting begins.”

If you take this and apply it to quality you begin to see that when a man calls his beat up old Oldsmobile Cutlass good quality, this could be a romantic assessment. He may think it is good because it has lasted him for a long time or maybe just because he likes the character of a beat up old car, it doesn’t really matter. When looking at it from a classical standpoint, you realize that the beat up old car may need cosmetic or engine work and that only could it be considered good quality.

Aspects of quality are in the multitudes, such as, unity vividness authority economy sensitivity clarity, class, authenticity, and multitudes more. These come to be irrelevant in that they are just subcategories of quality.

The application of quality is universal in the fact that it is possibility to have romantic or classical understanding of an object. Even the vacuum of space can have bad quality in that it is emptiness is disheartening, melancholy, and generally negative. "