Hi Dmb, Thanks for that, I don't get to all the posts. I fully agree that DQ is not a thing. An "event" is a good way to put it. It can also me seen as an "attitude", or an awareness, and as such it cannot be confined since it becomes more of a source which creates.
As I try to promote Quality in my neck of the woods I am asked for explanations. Such questions come from people with little background in philosophy or Eastern thought. I therefore try to look for simple analogies. Sometimes they work and I see a light come on in the listener. I find that using the word "ghost" befuddles people, so I explain human logic (the way most seem to see things) as a "creation" that only exists within human interaction. It is my sense that Pirsig saw the same thing. It is one thing to speak of such a man-made structure, but it is entirely different to actually live with that awareness. It used to make me dizzy as there was no firm ground there. However, once one is free from all those ties that are educated into us as Reality, the experience is immensely liberating. Everything seems to come naturally in the moment, without forethought. Thinking is still there but it is very different. So, my attempt at providing analogies are not to provide any Truth, but to provide Quality. As Pirsig said, things became lopsided when Man put Truth above Quality. As you point out, a rebalance is necessary, and that is what I try to promote. Mark On Oct 22, 2011, at 12:11 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Mark: > I sent this post to Steve and all under a different thread name but I also > think it addresses your general question about the relation between DQ and > sq. > > > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: [MD] Taking off the glasses? > Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:03:58 -0600 > > > > > > > > > Steve said to dmb: > ...From the dynamic perspective, it is impossible to be out of touch with DQ > since DQ is the very ground of being. To not be in touch with it would be to > cease to exist. We can't be _ontologically_ out of touch with DQ. > > > dmb says: > Ontology deals with what entities exist. DQ is not an entity or a thing. It > is an event, an experience. The MOQ rejects the metaphysics of substance, > both mental and physical. As James and Pirsig say together, pure experience > is neither mental nor physical because, as James says, inner and outer are > conceptual categories into which we sort experience, not the starting points > of reality, not the ontological realities that make experience possible. I > think you and Matt tend to misread Platonism into the MOQ because you're > taking DQ as some kind of external reality. As you put it, DQ begins where we > end. That's the wrong idea. The right idea is more along the lines of "Thou > Art That". Like I said, "to say one is out of touch with DQ is to say we > should be more sensitive and more responsive to experience as it's felt and > lived through, as opposed to our thoughts ABOUT and interpretations OF > experience. > > > > Steve said: > Sure, but surely you don't mean that someone is _literally_ living in the > past and therefore not in touch with the present. The person isn't not > feeling her feelings but only giving them a bad interpretation. So this isn't > an answer to a question about metaphysics. It is an answer to a question > about whether or not we have good concepts, and that question has nothing to > do with our metaphysical relation to DQ which is what it is regardless of > what we think about about it. This is a question about our relationship with > "DQ" (the concept) rather than with DQ (reality). > > > dmb says: > > I disagree. The question is very much about bad interpretations; It's all > about whether or not we have good concepts. This is the point and purpose of > replacing Platonism in general and SOM in particular with the MOQ. The > culture hands us a set of conceptual glasses with which we interpret > experience and those glasses have a blind spot with respect to DQ. Those are > the glasses that produce attitudes of objectivity. That is the set of > interpretive concepts that tell us science should be value-free, that reality > is what it is regardless of how we feel about it and morality is just a > comforting fiction. Not feeling our feelings has everything to do with it. > James and Pirsig are totally sympatico on this point too. The glasses we wear > are formed by the history of our culture. He's talking about those SOM > glasses when he says, "It's been necessary since before the time of Socrates > to REJECT THE PASSIONS, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for > an understanding of na tu > re's order which was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an > understanding of nature's order by RE-ASSIMILATING THOSE PASSIONS which were > originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of > man's consciousness, are a part of nature's order too. The CENTRAL part." > James says he could never be a Hegelian precisely because they insist "that > FEELING has nothing to do with the question, that it is a pure matter of > absolute REASON". He says that the one fundamental quarrel with them is their > "repudiation of the personal and aesthetic factors in the construction of > philosophy". James thinks it's impossible to deny that these factors "may be > as prophetic and anticipatory of truth as anything else we have" and that our > truest and best philosophies will be derived by using "ALL our faculties, > emotional as well as logical". As you might recall, the MOQ's central task is > to expand rationality at its roots so that even science is no longer to be > value-free. As w > e see in the case of Poincare, math and geometry have their own kind of > aesthetic beauty and intellectual creativity operates on the basis of > intuitive leaps and felt harmonies. > > And THE POINT here is that SOM and the MOQ are rival sets of glasses and the > whole idea is to replace the one that largely ignores and excludes DQ with > the one that puts DQ at the center. The problem (SOM) is being out of touch > with DQ and the MOQ is the solution to that problem. Like I said, those SOM > glasses are the problem; that's what creates the blind-spot to DQ. The > glasses we wear were forged by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and 25 centuries > of Apollonian imbalance, as in Nietzsche's complaints. All of my intellectual > heros have identified this problem one way or another. It's a cultural > criticism that comes in many excellent flavors. > > > Steve said to dmb: > Metaphysically, according to Pirsig you are a collection of static patterns > left in the wake of DQ. That is all I mean in saying that you begin where DQ > ends. ...DQ is primary experience as Pirsig defines it, but DQ can't be _your > own_ primary experience since it precedes "you." You are a collection of > static patterns left in it's wake. It is only after the fact that we infer > that there was a "you" having experience. This is Pirsig's Copernican shift. > "You" can't be out of touch with DQ since it is constantly being created by > it. > > > > dmb says: > > I see several major mistakes here. You've construed the MOQ's self as > separate from DQ. You have conflated the cultural evolutionary process with > the cognitive process of the individual. And "you" have - once again - spun > the use of a personal pronoun into a metaphysical claim involving the > Cartesian self or the self as a pre-existing ontological entity. These > mistakes produce a very abstract, unrealistic (even bizarre) understanding of > what "you" are and of what "left in the wake" means. > > When Hume famously said that he looked for the self and found none, he was > talking about the soul. It's no accident that Descartes got himself out of > the demon's vat only with God's help, you know? And as James opened his > attack on the Cartesian self, on consciousness as an entity, he noted that > this conception of the self was already disappearing from the scene. But > there is a tendency around here to suppose that rejecting the Cartesian > conception of the self is the same thing as denying ANY conception of the > self. This is a case where people get a lot of fancy reasons to go around > denying that people exist, which logically impossible and just plain silly. > The MOQ is about people and how people wrongly tend to think of themselves as > something set over against reality. as separate from reality. That's your > first mistake. To say we begin where DQ ends is to unsolve that part of the > problem, to re-assert a very SOMish distinction in exactly the place where we > are trying to ge t > rid of it. The idea here is to get over the Platonic notion that the real > reality is something outside of us or beyond our experience. > > The glasses you wear are a product of evolutionary history. They don't > suddenly pop into existence at each moment of experience. They are old > ghosts, a mile-long chain of boxcars full of inherited creations. Yes, your > personal history will effect the ways in which you take these cultural forms > and you'll add static patterns from your own experience but the forest of > static patterns of which you are composed has been growing and evolving for a > very long time. It grows and you grow dynamically. DQ is the engine that > drives the evolutionary process and this happens bit by bit, as "spur of the > moment decisions" are taken on the basis of DQ. The ability to respond to DQ > goes all the way down to atoms, as you'll recall from the free will debates. > But Poincare and the Zuni Brujo could do it too. This is also how he > describes Lila, whose battle is parable for everybody's battle. Look, DQ is > definitely part of the equation, part of the self.... > ""If you compare the levels of static patterns that compose a HUMAN BEING to > the ecology of a forest, and if you see the different patterns sometimes in > competition with each other, sometimes in symbiotic support of each other, > but always in a kind of tension that will shift one way or the other, > depending on EVOLVING circumstances, then you can also see that EVOLUTION > doesn't take place only within societies, it takes place within INDIVIDUALS > too. It's possible to see Lila as something much greater than a customary > sociological or anthropological description would have her be. Lila then > becomes a complex ecology of patterns moving toward Dynamic Quality. Lila > individually, herself, is in an EVOLUTIONARY BATTLE AGAINST the static > patterns of her own life." > > Remember the Cleveland Harbor effect? The SOM glasses are another version of > the static filters he talks about there in terms of maps and charts. The > conceptual filters are contrasted with experience as such, with the dismissed > "facts" and rejected "observations". > > "It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart > disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the > chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static > filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not > fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing." > "If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But > it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up > whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past 'facts' which are > extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern > we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact > has to keep hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, > before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have to > start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too." > > That's why he attacks those SOM glasses and why he keeps hammering away at > the DQ they filter out. See? To the extent that it's not on the conceptual > map, people will tend to reject the experience and stick to the map. > > > > > > > > > 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/md/archives.html 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/md/archives.html
