RISKYBIZ9
Mon, 9 Aug 1999 07:48:06 -0700
ROGER RE-ENTERS THE METAPHYSICAL DONNYBROOK Let me start from the top with Platt..... PLATT: For most people, primary reality is thought to be a perception of an object of some kind located “out there” in physical or mental space -- a structure, theory, photon, map, self, etc. ROGER: Some of our group have definite time/space, in here/out there paradigms stuck onto their world view. PIRSIG: "In the MOQ, the higher up the evolutionary ladder you go (from sub- atomic particles to people) the more freedom you have in making preferences. This is why generally a person’s experience will be that much richer and complex than a dog's while the dog's experience will be that much better than a tree's which will be better than a piece of rock's and so on." PLATT: For Pirsig, perception occurs at all levels..... What these patterns perceive expands as you go up the ladder. A human pattern of value perceives more patterns of value than a fish pattern of value. ROG: The only problem I have with Pirsig’s statement is that it is cloaked in 2500 years worth of SOM baggage. He has used subjects and objects to describe the unknowable. I am okay with acknowledging the existence of subatomic experience, or tree experience. However, these experiences are not differentiated subject/object experiences. A meteor does not create the s/o moon/meteor duality. Only the intellectual humans experience or create this unique form of experience (or are created by it) BUT, THAT WHICH *WE* DEFINE AS MOON/METEOR EXPERIENCE DOES EXIST. PLATT: So if I'm getting Pirsig's meaning right, primary reality in the MOQ consists of some patterns of value observing other patterns of value. But there's really no difference because “patterns of value” are intellectual concepts that are derived from and are secondary to the perceptions themselves. ROGER: Minor correction. I would say that the eternal flux of DQ creates what the intellectual level refers to as patterns which can interact with other patterns. Note the intellectual level is not necessary to its creation, just to its abstraction. PLATT: In other words, what see is you-seeing, and what you are is your perceptions. If your talking about ultimate or primary reality, there really isn't anything else except you. That's why I claim, “Mine is the only world.” ROG: The alternative is that we all see many sides of a shared world of experience/quality. Which ‘mine’ are you refering to Platt? The one that wrote this phrase last week, or the one that wrote it last month? How about the one that was you in high school? Who do you understand and empathize more with A)a current friend, or B) yourself as a teenager. You know very little if anything about this ‘younger you’ other than some distant memories of what he may be going through. Now to David B. DAVID .: Each healthy individual is a collection of static patterns of value from each of the four levels, a unique culture of one. ROG: Each of us is a unique part of Quality, from which the levels are a later abstracted. DAVID: As beings with intellectual capabilities, we have thoughts and ideas and ways to classify everything in the phenomenal world. And its perfectly legitimate to claim that there is a difference between our concepts and the thing in itself. But again, this ought not be construed to mean that the "object" of perception has no real existence, or that its existence depends on our perceptions. It just a re-imagining. In the MOQ there are no claims about ultimate reality, its just a better map. It's a better way to explain our perceptions, conceptions and place in the world. ROG: Objects are the output of an intellectual experience. I also do not doubt that the undifferentiated conceptually unkown flux of DQ is real, that it exists (though more as events or experience than things). But we create the object... the model. DAVID: This is what Magnus was getting at by saying a meteor can "experience" the moon as well as we can. ROG: No. That which we call moon/meteor interaction is an experience as well. DAVID: The inorganic level depends on experience for its existence and evolution, but it DOESN'T DEPEND ON OUR PERCEPTIONS FOR ITS EXISTENCE. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Our perceptions depend on their existence. Our perceptions are also dependent on the biological and social levels too. Our perceptions are are conducted, at least consciously, at the intellectual level. Obviously, subatomic structures experience a reality completely different than our own. ROG: Undualistic experience indeed does not depend on our existence. Sorted, leveled, objectified models sure do depend on us though. David, just ‘cause we named and built models of gravity does not imply that reality floated prior to humans. Our naming created objects, but it did not change preconceptual reality. DAVID: I think this is where part of the confusion lies. The MOQ's whole ontological scheme, the four static levels evolving dymanically, is based on experience. But its based on a broader and deeper meaning of that word and it goes way beyond what we think of as experience, namely our human experiences and observations. In the MOQ even atoms have experiences, if fact it pretty much describes reality as a verb. Its an infinite series of quality events, of direct experiences that leaves phenomenal reality in its wake. Its an infinite dance of freedom. Experience in this sense is built into the very fabric and process of reality. The epistemological issues are certainly tied in to this whole scheme, but that doesn't mean they are the same issues. The question of our perceptions, of our human experience, is a distinctly different matter. ROG: Here I agree completely. DAVID: Unlike the inorganic level, the biological level is not directly in contact with Dynamic Quality except at Quality events. Rog: Are these on Tuedays and Thursdays? Everything is composed of quality events. DAVID: Experiences of biological patterns are mediated through the inorganic level. Matter, time and space are reality for the bio level. We can recognize this in our own sense organs. As a biological organism with a central nervous system our eyes tell us something about the size, shape and color of other static patterns, but that's a far cry from our social level values or intellectual descriptions. What I mean is that not even basic sensory perceptions can be counted as direct experience. Even the second level of reality is once removed from direct contact with DQ. The inorganic level stands in ints way, so to speak. The social level is yet another step removed from its source of being. Its reality is mediated through two levels. The intellect, in case you haven't guessd by now, is removed from direct experience by that third layer of phenomenal reality, by that third level of static patterns. This is how questions of our perceptions are tied in with the overall scheme of the MOQ. Epistemologically speaking, our perceptions are indirect. They are heavily mediated through all the layers of reality that preceded the intellect in historical evolution. (Oh, please don't pull out that tired old quote again. It makes no sense by itself.) ROG: This I totally disagree with. Intellectual experience is not buffered experience. It is rich and dynamically varied. Intellectual versions of inorganic experience are pale shadows of what they reference. See the difference? (BTW , the quote makes total sense if you have the proper mind set) DAVID: Its like Rich said, "the intellectual level is one fourth" of phenomenal reality, but experience is common to the whole shebang. Experience creates reality and our perceptions are a part of that reality, the top part. ROG: I would say that intellectual experience is one fourth of experience, but all of our conceptual model. The ULTIMATE REALITY is infinitely grander than our models. Now to Avid....... IN RESPONSE TO PLATT’S: > For Pirsig, primary reality is a perception of Quality, something > which you, being a pattern of, are already. AVID WROTE: This is true only for Static Quality, and because Static quality HAS to be a pattern, I suggest using SPQ[static pattern of quality] to remind us of it. ROG: I agree with most of Avid’s writing. (I prefer Patterned Quality, because sq is not strictly static.) And finally to Rich.......... RICH: Are you both asserting the MOQ is an idealism? ROG: Not if this means that it is ‘all in our heads’. However, if you mean it ain't materialistic -- then of course. I do think that mind and matter are models abstracted from experience. I am reluctant to get into another debate with you on philosophical terms though, for fear you will again say...."well that isn't what I meant by idealism" RICH: If so, I honestly can't get around one thing. Suppose -- according to the idealism -- that there are only experiences. By what mechanism do our experiences coincide with the exact same 4 levels? ROG: Remember, you and I share 99.9999999999% of reality (experience) together. We are probably 100% related if we go back less than a hundred or two hundred thousand years. Since then, we share a same social history, and a shared intellectual upbringing. We see a very slightly different facet of the infinitely sided consciousness called DQ. In summary, I think Walter was right. We need to spend the next few days agreeing on a set of questions. Then we need to all give our answers to these same questions. We can then iteratively try to reach clear consensus or clear lines of disagreement. Responses are always appreciated. Rog MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]