John and Any Other Dedicated Metaphysicians,
I (Roger) enjoyed your post, John, but would like to contrast my views with
what I think are
yours. The main difference is that I sense you attribute quality to subjects
and objects, while I attribute subjects and objects to quality. Allow me to
clarify by a few random quotes from your post.
"....if something is good' it has quality. Something 'bad' lacks quality. We
can recognise quality,...... our experience.........the hot stove is not '
good', but it certainly has quality......the song becomes staler,......."
I understand that our entire way of speaking is colored by thousands of
years of SOM, and we all have a tendency to use terms like these for
linguistic clarity (RMP does it throughout Lila, and I am doing it throughout
too) but if these quotes are reflective of your opinion, then it differs
dramatically from mine.
Immediate experience is not ours..... we are derived from it. Experience is
not biological or intellectual, it is all. Biology and intellect and stoves
and paintings and songs and editors and consciousness are patterns derived
from experience. When you apply this hierarchy to metaphysics, your concerns
on quality disappear. The painting or the song or the subject did change, but
it is because the experience changed... and this creates a new painting and a
new observer.
I agree with you that the dynamic/static split seems awkward and is never
completely explained. However, during the course of the month I stumbled
upon some quotes from James' Radical Empiricism that have given me a new take
on it. To paraphrase, James offers that subjects and objects, or static
patterns of quality, are not divisions of pure experience, they are additions
of experiences. They are patterns of experience, or to be exact, patterns
derived from experiences. This clarification (though contradicting some of
Pirsig's writings) has proven insightful.
It has been a good month for me on the squad, I thank you all. I am really
starting to grasp that when RMP says to pursue DQ that he means to free
ourselves from static patterns. And the final pattern to reject is that of
the self, of the fictional little editor we call "I" that resides behind our
eyeballs. There really is just pure experience.
Sorry in advance if I misrepresented you John. Comments are appreciated.
Roger
......Thoughts are things.
But a horse is a thing thought.
A unicorn is a not thing thought.
Which are you?
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
