John (the mystically impaired) said: ...there is a large piece of the metaphysical pie missing here (at least to my mind) and that is how to get from DQ to sq. I've even heard DQ described as chaos - as in chaotic change is "better" than static good and that just doesn't make sense. There seems to my reasoning to be a logical need for "good" patterning in order for any meaning at all to arise - for the inorganic elements of a chemistry professor to organize themselves or for the arising analogies of intellect to match closely the Reality they are describing. dmb says:Well, the idea that intellect should match the reality it describes is known as the correspondence theory of truth and is the classic example of what objectivity means. It is the theory of truth that goes with subject-object metaphysics, where the understanding of the subject "corresponds" to objective reality. But the kind of empiricism that Pirsig subscribes to reject objectivity and the correspondence theory of truth. The ground of reality is not an objective material structure but pure experience itself. Since this radical empiricism says that subject and objects are secondary, are concepts derived from experience, we ought not imagine this primary experience as subjective or as experience OF an objective reality. That would make subjects and objects primary and the experience secondary. The MOQ reverses that and thereby demotes subjects and objects. Instead of being the metaphysical basis that makes experience possible, they are construed as concepts that follow from experience, as one of many possible ways to interpret experience. There's another point that might help. In the MOQ, truth and meaning are static intellectual patterns. Like all static patterns, they provide enough stability to preserve the Dynamic improvements of the past. In the MOQ, truth and meaning are contextual and provisional but that doesn't mean the truth changes so fast as to produce chaos or that meaning slips away so fast that we can't say anything that's true. And despite the rejection of objective truth, our intellectual descriptions still have to agree with experience and are tested in experience. That's really what makes science and other intellectual pursuits work. Regardless of their metaphysical assumptions and the limitations they impose, such truths are still based on experience. I mean, the MOQ doesn't reject science, scholarship or other kinds of "logical patterning". It merely understands them differently and subordinates these intellectual truths to DQ.
John said: Good as a structural pattern of Reality which imposes itself upon the mind of the discerner so that the empirical deductions which arise in experience can be judged and chosen. Pronouncing it as a mystical occurrence is a cop out when so much intellect has been expended, explaining so much mystery already. dmb says:I'm really not sure what you're saying here. In the MOQ, there is always a discrepancy between concepts and reality. Here, the primary reality is not structured or patterned. Structures and patterns are derived from the undifferentiated, unpatterned, unstructured flux of experience. "The Good was not a FORM of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way". (near the end of chapter 29 of ZAMM) "Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress from degeneration. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, preserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other." (From Lila, near the end of chapter 9.) "Now it comes! Because Quality is the generator of the mythos. That's it. That's what he meant when he said, "Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it." Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to either side...that is the terra incognita of the insane. He knew that to understand Quality he would have to leave the mythos. That's why he felt that slippage. He knew something was about to happen." (from the end of chapter 28 of ZAMM) _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_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/
