John and Marsha --
[John, on 12/6]:
Experience can't be what you describe, either unpatterned or without
staticity. The very defining of experience requires a static pattern in
order to be experienced. The idea of "before" is itself a static pattern
of existence relative to time and obviates the pure nullity you postulate,
imo.
But "unpatterned experience" is far worse because it's a philosophical
self-contradiction.
[Marsha, on 12/27]:
Is it a philosophical self-contradiction in the same way as seeing orange
or blue? If not, then how is it a philosophical self-contradiction?
[John replies]:
It's a contradiction because experience is a patterning. Thus you can't
have "unpatterned patterning" in a philosophically logical way. Not
unless you want to do some explaining of yourself young lady!
[Marsha persists]:
John,
Quality is unpatterned experience and patterned experience, so no,
experience is not necessarily patterned; that can be realized first-hand.
Experience often involves patterns, but sometimes it does not involve
patterns.
I have to side with John in this debate, not because experience can't be
anything we want to call it, but because Pirsig specifically defines it as
"any pattern that appears long enough to be noticed within the flux of
immediate experience (i.e. within Dynamic Quality)." But Marsha is also
right if you take seriously Pirsig's assertion that "Quality is the first
slice of undivided experience." (It is doubtful, however, that a logician
would accept a thing as "undivided" once sliced.)
The ambiguity in these statements is easily resolved by regarding experience
as "patterned awareness" and sensibility as the emotive state induced by
pure (unpatterned) Value. Pirsig's
holdout for direct ("pre-intellectual") experience to support his
transcendental Quality is the cause of this confusion, and it has led to
incomprehensible descriptions like this:
"Immediate experience is experience where there is no distinction between
what is experienced and the act of experiencing itself." -- [Anthony McWatt:
Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality]
Epistemologically, experience is clearly both an "act" (which is itself
differentiated) and the cognizant awareness of "distinctions" or patterns.
I call experience the process of "objectivizing", and I distinguish it from
value-sensibility which is primary to experience and esthetic or emotional
(rather than "intellectual") in nature. Unfortunately, MoQ's author failed
to make this distinction.
But more important to philosophy, I think, is the concept that existence is
a differentiated reality in which All is perceived as "each and every" by a
subject in relation to its object(s). Every moment, every experience, every
thought, every idea is differentiated from every other. And the substantive
ground of this reality is the Value from which we are each estranged at
birth. We can experience and know only what we construct from this Value --
good, bad, or indifferent.
Yet, the fact that this pluralistic construction is not chaotic but has an
order (or "intelligence", if you will) that is universally apprehended and
appreciated strongly implies a creative source that transcends all
difference and otherness. Although Mr. Pirsig would like us to think of
this source as DQ, I cannot accept Quality as an absolute. Quality for me
is only the valuistic "realization" of otherness, and it requires a sensible
agent. We are all "One in Essence". The source I propose is uncreated,
unconditional, and beyond experience. It is the essential "not-other" from
which the appearance of otherness is derived.
I hope this will help to clarify your differences. Thanks for allowing me
to intrude in this discussion, and let me take this opportunity to wish you
both a healthful and spiritually fulfilling New Year.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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