Hello everyone
From: Heather Perella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [MD] subject / object logic
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:13:30 -0700 (PDT)
[Dan G.]
> I tend to disagree with you here and I believe the
> MOQ does too. You seem to
> be saying that matter comes before ideas while the
> MOQ states that ideas
> come before matter. Please re-read what DMB writes
> above as it makes a lot
> of sense. You may agree but your words here do not,
> so far as I can see.
Ideas come before matter? This is the egg or the
chicken first notion. Quality came before ideas and
matter. Quality is pre-intellectual. As to matter,
well, isn't that a static pattern of value. Where did
this idea before matter or vice versa come from
anyways. Dmb was talking about transaction. That's a
two way street. Cars moving both ways at once.
Hi SA
I've reproduced DMB's submission to get a better handle on what he's saying:
[DMB]
The phrase that really caught my eye here was, "Experience, then, is not
an 'interaction' but a 'transaction'." If I understand this rightly,
this is what Pirsig means when he says that experience is not caused by
subjects and objects but rather subjects and objects are caused by
experience. They are derived from that primal, pure experience. They are
a product of reflection.
They're inventions of the intellect. Of course we don't have to
re-invent this interpretation after every blink. This way of
interpreting experience is given to us through language. This way of
understanding the nature of experience has become common sense and we
all do it so habitually and so automatically that most folks never doubt
it for a moment. One need not become a mystic to overcome this
inheritance, although I would welcome that route too. In a way its as
simple as noticing that our thoughts and theories about experience are
always going to come after the experience. And when we realize that
subjects and objects are among those thoughts and theories it seems an
obvious thing to say they are derived from experience. Saying that
subjects and objects are the cause of experience, then, is a bit like
saying books are caused by book reviews.
Dan:
Please note the sentence: "They're [subjects and objects] inventions of the
intellect." And note also his final sentence: "Saying that subjects and
objects are the cause of experience, then, is a bit like saying books are
caused by book reviews."
Subjects and objects are intellectual patterns of values... ideas. So it
seems pretty simple to see that ideas come before matter, which Mr. Pirsig
has said numerous times:
This is difficult to untangle. Bohrs observation and the
MOQs quality event are the same, but the contexts are
different. The difference is rooted in the historic chicken-and-
egg controversy over whether matter came first and
produces ideas, or ideas come first and produce what we
know as matter. The MOQ says that Quality comes first,
which produces ideas, which produce what we know as
matter. The scientific community that has produced
Complementarity, almost invariably presumes that matter
comes first and produces ideas. However, as if to further
the confusion, the MOQ says that the idea that matter
comes first is a high quality idea! I think Bohr would say
that philosophic idealism (i.e. ideas before matter) is a
viable philosophy since complementarity allows multiple
contradictory views to coexist. (Robert Pirsig, LILA'S CHILD, annotation 67)
....the relationship of the MOQ to philosophic idealism is an
important one that is not adequately spelled out in Lila. In a
materialist system mind has no reality because it is not material. In an
idealist system matter has no reality because it is just an idea. The
acceptance of one meant the rejection of the other. In the MOQ, both
mind and matter are levels of value. Materialist explanations and
idealist explanations can coexist because they are descriptions of
coexisting levels of a larger reality.
The MOQ does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality
as composed of material substance and independent of us. It says it is
an extremely high quality idea. We should follow it whenever it is
practical to do so. But the MOQ, like philosophic idealism, says this
scientific view of reality is still an idea. If it were not an idea, then
that independent scientific material reality would not be able to
change as new scientific discoveries come in. (Robert Pirsig, LILA'S CHILD)
Dan:
Perhaps DMB could answer better but the way I see it, "transaction" as used
in his paragraph above does not mean a two way street. It means there are no
subjects independent of objects. Rather subjects and objects are derived
through the transaction of experience, which is pretty much what Mr. Pirsig
is saying too.
Thank you for writing,
Dan
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