Krimel said to dmb:...You say, "Distinguishing good from bad is exactly what we mean by a "differentiation"." But isn't the innate ability to sense good from bad exactly what Pirsig claims DQ is? Doesn't this kinda of leave you tying yourself up in knots? dmb says:Knot at all. You're simply blurring the MOQ's first and most basic distinction. Differentiations are static and the sense of undefined betterness is dynamic. I mean, there is a conceptual version of good and bad and then there is the immediate sense of Quality. Krimel said: ..Come on Dave, "undefined betterness" is that a slip knot that you think will let you slide around making any sense? It looks more like a noose to me. If it's undefined, what makes you think it is "better"? dmb says:Well, you probably saw the Pirsig quote on evolution that adds this undefined betterness to Darwinism's notion of "fittest". I posted a quote earlier today in which the same notion is applied to the Brujo and in the hot stove example, which I've been throwing at you for years. I mean, this idea appears in Pirsig's work again and again with all kinds of examples. He also shows how artists, scientists, mechanics and motorcyclists follow this undefined sense of betterness. If it still makes no sense to you, then I hardly know what else to say. I guess you're just hopelessly static and hopelessly square. I mean, the notion refers to something you're suppose to already know from your own experience. It refers to a type of experience, not a metaphysical abstraction.
Krimel said: ..So DQ is this kind of sixth sense that does the differentiating. I agree that we have this "sense of sense" a kind of synthesis of various parallel processes that basically passes an instant judgment of "good" or "bad" on immediate experience. But I don't think that is what DQ IS. dmb says:The quote on radical empiricism says that pure experience logically precedes conceptual categories such as "physical and psychical" and yet here you are trying to explain it in terms of psycho-physical "processes". See, your response to this is always the same in that sense. You're insisting on the very premise that's already been rejected. Krimel said: Here you go way over the edge. Perception without concepts is not freedom or creative it is just clueless. It would be like living in a world totally devoid of meaning or sense or any connection to our past history. You call it spontaneous; I call that paralysis; like a deer in the headlights. Part of the problem is that you are so stubbornly unclear on what you mean. But here is what I think you mean. When you talk about 'pre-conceptual' you really mean non-verbal. dmb says:Now this is an especially sloppy piece of nonsense. You're criticizing me by making the same point I already made in the very next sentence. "This doesn't mean we can abandon static patterns" I said, "it's more like they recede into the background. To the extent that they are mastered, they become invisible, as in the case of every craftsman and mechanic and artist who ever lived. They're like your surf board and you use them to ride the wave of DQ. It's like developing an intuitive skill. I suppose that why sailing and motorcycle riding are the central metaphors. You learn the stuff you need to know and then forget it in favor of flying along by the seat of your pants. You might say it takes a lot of discipline to be free." And if that isn't stupid enough, you then praise me for it as if I finally learned it from you, as if I didn't say it first. It's ridiculous.... Krimel said Again, it's like you are almost parroting me here. From a metaphysical point of view static quality is seen as foreground against a dynamic background. Regularity, form, systems, emerge as self organizing strange attractors, set against a dynamic background of chaos and uncertainty. ...Everything that is stabile, the oxygen content of the air, to the force of gravity, to heat of the sunlight are all so static that they support the dynamic quality of living systems. ...Our senses are tuned to the dynamic changing aspects of the environment any change or, the dynamic quality of immediate experience, captures our awareness. One of the reasons that we attend to DQ in the environment is to try to render it static ASAP. ...Change, uncertainty, DQ upset these probability estimates. Anything that decrease the probabilities or our estimates of what the futute will be like demand our immediate attention we either need to assimilate into our estimates or change our estimate to accommodate the new data. dmb says: Like I said to John, trying to think of static and dynamic in terms of physical states will only lead to misunderstanding. DQ is not chaotic in that sense. It's not chaotic in any sense. Actually, following DQ can involve a great deal of certainty, although not in the sense of scientific or intellectual certainty. These are not ontological categories that describe what sorts of things exist. As I said to John, static and dynamic are categories of experience. Again, this is a case of trying to understand the rejection of materialism in terms of the thing being rejected. It's never gonna make sense to you until you drop those assumptions. Maybe it's not necessary to drop them sincerely or forever, but for the sake of your own comprehension you simply have to set that view aside. How many times have I said this to you, Krimel? Go ahead, try it. All the cool kids are doing it. _________________________________________________________________ Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_QuickAdd_062009 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/
