dmb said to Krimel: ...As in the hot stove example, the negative quality of the situation is immediately felt and there is immediate movement to address that negative situation. In that sense, the movement toward betterness is very basic and spontaneous. It is an uncalculated response based on the immediately felt quality of the situation.
Krimel replied: Ok, we get "betterness" but we get "worserness" too. Whether we run away from worserness or towards betterness is a chicken and egg kind of question. The example of the hot stove is the example of reflex action. It is a purely hardwired biological reflex action; in which certain pain receptors bypass any cognitive processing at all. The input connects directly to the output. We jerk away from pain. ...What you describe below seems hardly more sophisticated. These are experiences that all animals have and are necessary for their survival. Even single cell organisms have tropisms where they are attracted to light or repelled from acids... That sense of Quality as Pirsig calls it is unconscious and primitive in evolutionary terms. dmb says: Right, better and worse aren't even as far apart as the chicken and egg. To move away from the bad IS better and vice versa. The two opposed ways of characterizing it are among the post hoc descriptions of a pre-verbal experience. More importantly, your description of the hot stove example as a "hardwired biological reflex action" is also among the post hoc descriptions. What's more, the description of input and output, of organisms reacting to external stimuli, is based on the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics. So you have missed the point in two very important ways. (It also suffers from the usual reductionism.) In both cases you are unsaying what Pirsig has said and so it's no wonder you are underwhelmed by it. Not that you should be overwhelmed, but I think it's important to realize that this is the pivot point of Pirsig's revolution. It's not supposed to be scientifically sophisticated. He's talking metaphysics here, turning SOM on its head. It's supposed to be a concrete example of what it means to say that Quality is not just subjective nor is it a property of the object, to say that Quality is prior to either of those things and gives rise to those things. The same could be said about the freshman compositions read by Pirsig's students back in Bozeman. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or a property of the beheld? Neither. Either claim would be an intellectual description assigned after the fact, after the Quality is experienced. This is also why "Quality" can't be defined, because it's prior to definitions or verbal descriptions. This is also why the MOQ is a contradiction in terms. Metaphysics is full of definitions and it has to be or you can't call it metaphysics. The pre-intellectual nature of Quality would logically prohibit such a metaphysics, but we do it anyway because we're a little sleazy. Seems like each time I complain about this kind of move you take it as some kind of disrespect for science. That's not at all what I'm saying. As far as intellectual descriptions go, that's a good one and in most cases I'd proceed as if it were the truth. It's based on experience, it works and it makes sense almost all the time. The dispute here is the way you're using it as if it were an appropriate response to a metaphysical, epistemological point. It's not. It's a category error of some kind and it's a whopper. As a result you repeatedly undo the main point. Krimel continued: I am puzzled that you think much can be made from this kind of experiences. Isn't it after all the higher level processes of cognition that define us as human? They serve as checks and balances on the more primitive emotional responses. The capacity for rational thought seems to arise from the fact that these instant impressions and pre-intellectual responses are very often wrong and the ability to override them is a serious benefit. ...Certainly they come before cognitive assessment but without cognitive assessment we might as well be reptiles. Cognitive assessment is what allows us to avoid sitting on hot stoves in the first place. dmb says: Its easy to confuse biological quality with dynamic quality because neither is cognitive. That is one of the biggest mistakes made by intellectuals and hippies. There have been tons of Buddhist guru types who've destroyed themselves with sex scandals. I asked Pirsig about that once and he explained in those basic terms. The guru and his student are engaged in practices that facilitate the dynamic and spontaneous modes of consciousness anyway, of course. And if it's working, everything in their lives gets shaken loose, everything starts to look especially delicious and then, Wham! They end of in bed, probably falling in love too, and sometime it gets really, really wild. I mean criminal, Krimel. But more to the point, yes, all the higher forms of static quality that we are gets built up through experience and so we all have different capacities to respond to dynamic quality. In the arts and sciences, for example, we aren't just responding with the gut feelings of the organism. (Unless you're a Republican.) But one can master the material in such a way that it becomes virtually invisible and yet available at any time without effort. It's just like tying your shoes, riding a bike, driving or simply walking into a room. We just do it without deliberation. Same goes for painting and physics, except they both require a longer period of training. It those cases, there is a lot more to absorb and forget but we can be just as spontaneous about it. Then, even when working out a very sophisticated problem, one can be creative, inventive and otherwise follow Quality as the task unfolds. Obviously, biological descriptions of the nervous system don't help here either, although its probably less tempting to think they would. Thanks. _________________________________________________________________ Want to do more with Windows Live? Learn “10 hidden secrets” from Jamie. http://windowslive.com/connect/post/jamiethomson.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!550F681DAD532637!5295.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_domore_092008 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
