ROGER IS HOPELESSLY BIASED, SO HE ASKED HIS
IMAGINARY FRIEND PROFESSOR PHAEDRUS TO
GRADE THE PAPERS
I hope I do not upset anybody with my artistic liberties. But rather than
answering myself, I thought I would cut and paste PARAPHRASED quotes right
out of ZMM and Lila to address David's recent post and the various responses
to Denis' and my questions. Admittedly, I have changed some wording, and
even added a twist or two of my own in places to clarify or to get it to flow
better. However, I am not intentionally distorting what I believe the
fictional Phaedrus would or in many cases basically did say.
With that disclosed, let me mention that my exercise is specifically oriented
to get people to pull out their copies of Zen and Lila and reacquaint
themselves with the work. That is why I list the chapter and paperback page
number (all quotes are from Zen unless otherwise noted). There is nothing
wrong with various members re-inventing or recreating the MOQ. But they
should not confuse their metaphysics with the MOQ. In all fairness, the same
applies to me, so let me know where I have misunderstood or confused the
concepts. How are my versions of what Phaedrus would say different than
Pirsig's? But please include the same courtesy of references.
Let me start with David B's hilariously funny and well written post......
DAVID:
It seems to me that Denis and Roger have used a MOQ brush to paint a
SOMpicture. I've tried to understand what they've described. And as I
understand it, they have all four of the levels of static Quality "located in
the Q-Intellect",as Denis said or "biological patterns are just cuts of the
intellectual knife", as Roger put it. I don't think it's correct to collapse
the levels in this way. I think putting the whole of reality into the
intellect is a pretty radical kind of solipsism.
PHAEDRUS:
No David, Roger was not the originator of that cutting analogy. He stole it
from me. What you must remember is that when analytical thought, the knife,
is applied to experience, Primal Reality is always killed in the process.(Ch7
p70 ) It is important to see the knife for what it is and not be fooled
into thinking the levels or anything else have to be the way we sliced them.
Concentrating on the intellectual knife itself, it is apparent that we use it
in ways of our own choosing until we reach what we want. Even the terms
classic and romantic, static and dynamic, and the four levels are examples of
this knifesmanship.(Ch6 P66)
DAVID:
In the picture they paint, the intellect interacts with DQ directly and
CREATES the world of static patterns. This conception of the static
patterns seems a lot like Kant's categories of the mind, but with
magical creative powers. And aside from the solipsism and creative
ability, the epistemolgy of this notion seems very much in line with the
classical empiricists, that is SOM and the mind\body split.
PHAEDRUS:
We respond to our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues.
We invent the levels and the things that fill them and call these analogues
reality. And they are reality. But that which causes us to invent the
analogues is quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our
environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it.
(Ch20 p225)
DAVID:
As Bo says,
you've got "reality" in one sphere and the intellect in another and
you're rather skeptical about the possibility of connecting the two
spheres. It's kinda Cartesian in that respect. I think that this picture
of the MOQ leaves us in so better shape than before. Its just as lonely,
atomistic, and impenetrable as SOM ever was. In short I think you've
constructed a SOM philosophy using MOQish ideas and Pirsigian
vocabulary. Its a SOM scene painted in MOQ colors, so to speak.
PHAEDRUS:
David, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it
within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That's why Quality
can't be defined. (Ch20 p225). The MOQ's fundamental division of reality,
the first cut of the intellectual knife, is not between your static reality
and intellect. It is, as Roger and Denis state, between dynamic, flowing,
undefineable quality and static, discontinuous, conceptual patterns. (Ch 29
p417-8)
DAVID:
I believe you've mistaken the nature of Pirsig's problem with
"substance". It certainly doesn't mean that there is no reality outside
of DQ and our conceptualizations of it. It doesn't mean there is no
inorganic reality.
PHAEDRUS:
That, David, is ridiculous....The world has no existence whatsoever outside
the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in the days of the sophists was
recognized as such..... The whole blessed thing is a human invention. (Ch3
p31)
Do you really think this motorcycle we have been working on is made of
"substance"? Where you see substance, I see ideas. We've been discussing
concepts, and you've mistaken them for primal reality.(Ch8 p86)
DAVID:
Yes, Pirsig objects to the notion that Aristotle's
"substance" is the bedrock of reality. He objects to the notion that the
"mind" arises out of complex "matter", but he doesn't deny the existence
of "substance". In the MOQ its known as inorganic and organic static
Quality. Intellectual static patterns are just as real, but are a
seperate level of reality, a different level of static Quality.
Confusing them collapses the MOQ like a house of cards.
PHAEDRUS:
Before Aristotle, there was no such things as mind and matter, subject and
object, form and substance, DQ and sq, biological and intellectual patterns.
Those divisions are just dialectic inventions that came later. These
divisions are not there to be discovered. They are artistic creations. They
appear real because we are in that mythos. (ch29 p336-7)
DAVID:
That's exactly where the levels come in. Matter is radically re-imagined
as inorganic and biologicial static patterns of Quality, and mind exists
in the MOQ as the top two levels.
PHAEDRUS:
Exactly! Conceived....imagined......
DAVID:
And its not just a matter of
re-organizing "things" into different categories. Pirsig's ontological
scheme does a lot more than just replace "things" with "patterns". The
levels of static Quality replace subjects and objects with a unified
field of evolutionary progress. The MOQ's description of the conflicts
between the levels, and the moral codes that go with it, certainly seems
to defy the idea that they are "just cuts of the intellectual knife".
And even though they are all made of static Quality, the levels are
discrete and represent different values. Putting all the levels into the
intellect ignores those distinctions and makes the moral codes into a
pointless exercise in sorting different kinds of thoughts. (IntPoV)
PHAEDRUS:
No David, the real train of knowledge isn't a static entity that can be
stopped and subdivided. Once you stop it to subdivide it isn't a train
anymore. (Ch24 p254-5) You've taken the Quality out of reality and all you
have left are static concepts. To paraphrase William James, reality is , in
its essential nature, dynamic and flowing. Only our concept of reality can
be static and discontinuous. (Ch 29 p417-8 Lila)
DAVID:
SOM has created a
rift between the mythos and logos that is just plain crazy. In the MOQ
these two can't be seperated any more that organisms can be seperated
from inorganic Quality. In Pirsig's ontological scheme the existence of
social values is not possible without the biological organisms that
constitute the society. And naturally it follows that the intellectual
level values can not exist outside of the mythos. SOM handles the first
two levels pretty well, but its big mistake is the failure to recognize
its own parent, the failure to properly respect the role of the mythos
in the scientific process. It skips a level. It imagines a society a
created by the intellect, instead of the other way around, which is the
MOQ version. As Pirsig might put it, the intellect doesn't create
society any more than society invents human organisms.
PHAEDRUS:
The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and
his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. (ch29
p338) The breakthrough of the sophists was to regard the mythos, the
collective way we have divided and classified reality, not as revealed truth,
but as imaginitive creations of art. They appear real because we are in that
mythos. (ch29 p336-7)
DAVID:
Pirsig's solution is just another piece of evidence that the levels are
real and not just in the intellect.
PHAEDRUS:
You have completely misread my friend Pirsig. As he explained so eloquently
in Lila, objective reality emerges through our attentiveness to DQ. We
notice differences and correlations of differences, and repetitive patterns
of correlations derived from experience. We call these patterns derived from
experience 'objects'. After a while we get good at this chain of deductions,
at this deft wielding of the intellectual knife, and we mistake the world of
subjects and objects as primary. In this way, patterns derived from direct
experience become the universe of distinguishable things. (ch9 p137-8 Lila)
Now on to the questions:
Q1) Are all patterns of value also intellectual patterns?
A) The levels and any other divisions of the analytical knife are artistic
creations. The segmented static world of distinguishable things is the work
of the intellect. All static, discontinuous patterns emerge from the work of
this intellectual blade. The world of distinctions has no existence outside
the human imagination.
(Combined from previous references)
Q2) Were the four levels of the MOQ discovered or created?
A) As I once said, if you believe gravity was sitting in the middle of
nowhere billions of years before Sir Isaak was born and that magically he
discovered this concept, well..... that is ridiculous....The static world
has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost,
and in the days of the sophists was recognized as such..... The whole blessed
thing is a human invention. (Ch3 p31) Quality is the continuing stimulus
which puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every
last bit. (Ch20 p225) The divisions we call intellectual or social or
whatever are just dialectic inventions. These are not there to be
discovered. They are artistic creations that appear real because we are in
that mythos. (ch29 p336-7)
***************************
ROGER'S END NOTES:
Well, there it is.... My version of how I think the fictional Phaedrus would
answer. And every word I put in his mouth was referenced with similar or in
some cases exact quotes from ZMM or Lila. Have I misrepresented something?
Probably. Will some of you feel I distorted the master's words? Almost
definitely. But I did it in the spirit of giving you each a chance to point
out higher quality interpretations. Please do so. I will keep an open mind.
Now reach for those dog-eared copies and tell me how close or far off I
was.......
Roger Parker
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
