Hi Arlo
What represents reality is not the reality that it is representing!
The way I see it is that the only thing that's real is Quality - and
Pirsig/MoQ splits this into Static Quality and Dynamic Quality.
We use Static Quality to represent experience thereby making Static
Quality at least one step removed from what it represents.
As the MoQ is an empirical system, the empirical data that we use to
build our notion of reality is heavily filtered by our senses and how we
are taught to think. We use a very small sub-set of all available data
to build up a picture of the world we live in as our senses remove or
ignore the majority of the data that is available.
Given that the personal data available via our senses is minuscule
compared to the total available it would seem reasonable to assume that
any map of the world that we build is going to be illusory and not actual.
That doesn't mean that it's not real - just not entirely correct. I.e.
it's an illusion.
Horse
On 29/04/2011 18:57, Arlo Bensinger wrote:
[Horse]
MoQ static patterns are no more or less real than subjects and objects
(in my view) - they are used to represent experience and not
experience itself (DQ).
[Arlo]
Hi Horse. I think we are on the same page, I am (again) perhaps
quibbling over minutia, but that's where I am these days.
So I think you are using "real" in the statement above in the SOM
sense of the word, e.g. "existentially real". Right, in this regard,
MOQ patterns are no more "existentially real" than subjects or objects
within SOM.
But I think, as I see it, the key is not to label everything
"illusions" but to reconceptualize what is meant by "real".
As I understand it, a MOQ counters the notion that "real" is an
existential beingness independent of experiential value. Within a MOQ,
"real" is that which has experiential value. In other words, "real" is
"what has value".
So no, static patterns of quality do not have any more existential
reality than the "objects" of the SOM world, Pirsig has not simply
replaced one existential "real" for another. But what he does is move
our understand of "real" away from an independent, existential "thing"
and into the valuation of experience.
So that Hamburger I had for lunch was not "an illusion", it was real,
but its "realness" is not derived from some independent existential
beingness, its "realness" was derived from the experiential value that
this pattern held.
It is in this sense that Pirsig is able to exclaim that social morals
"are as real as rocks and tree" (LILA). It is not that they manifest
some independent existential beingness, but that they have VALUE in
experience (which I realize is redundant).
So I guess my point is that the illusion is that "realness" is
existential, when instead "realness" is experiential (or empirical, if
you will).
Does this make sense?
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