dmb said:
That's the meaning of "truth" in the MOQ. "Truth is a static intellectual
pattern within a larger entity called Quality." ...and for pragmatists like
Pirsig there are many truths, all of which are provisional and invented - as
opposed to eternal and discovered.
Ron replied:
Well, if we are to take Dynamic Quality as eternal and discovered, that which
persists through time and extends beyond the individual experience then we are
indeed speaking about a singular truth, that which the monism of MoQ is
predicated upon...
dmb says:
You've directly contradicted the textual evidence, Ron. Sigh. It's so damn
discouraging. Do I really need to explain HOW you're defying the evidence? In
the MOQ, truth is a static pattern and DQ is the source and substance of all
static patterns. Truths are subordinate to DQ and DQ is the larger "entity"
from which all static patterns are derived. DQ is not true or false because
those designations are intellectual and static whereas DQ is prior to and more
basic than anything we could say or think about it.
Let's be clear about what Pirsig is and is not saying, shall we? Again, here is
the textual evidence.
"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
abstractions."
"Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality."
You see how DQ cannot be considered any kind of truth, singular or otherwise?
Put another way, direct immediate experience is not true or false. It simply
is.
That is the distinction between DQ and sq. DQ is the primary empirical reality
(direct experience) and intellectual abstractions (idea, concepts, definitions)
are static quality. Primary means first, prior to, and concepts are secondary,
are derived from the primary. Pirsig quotes James on this point: "There must
always be a discrepancy between concepts [sq] and reality [DQ], because the
former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing."
That's the meaning of "truth" in the MOQ. "Truth is a static intellectual
pattern within a larger entity called Quality."
dmb said previously:
There is nothing logically contradictory about having an experience while
thinking at the same time. The idea here is to get them both working TOGETHER.
And doing that means putting them in their proper relation, knowing which is
which.
Ron replied:
Right, as A.N. Whitehead asserted, :"We must construe our knowledge of the
appearent world as being an individual experience of something which is more
than personal. Nature is thus a totality including individual experiences, so
that we must reject the distinction between nature as it really is and our
experiences of it which are purely psychological. Our experiences of the
appearent world are nature itself."
Now there is a lot to chew on here and it has a quite a bit to say on the
matter of truth as a sort of singularity, the ancients exhaulted truth as that
which was the closest to the good, in other words truth is not just one of many
static patterns it is the best and if it is perennial then there is something
about it that persists through change, meaning that some truths are better or
truer than others, some truths are more than personal they extend past the
individual experience.
dmb says:
Although he is comparable to Pirsig is many respects, here Whitehead seems to
be addressing the problem of SOM is a half-baked way, wherein the "subjective"
construed as part of the "objective" world. That isn't quite enough to put him
in agreement with Pirsig or the other pragmatists. For Pirsig and James,
immediate experience is even prior to concepts like "the world" and the
"individual experience" of it. For our pragmatists, experience is reality but
this is pure experience or DQ, not the "individual experience" OF "the world".
Whitehead's formulation is suspiciously like a subjective encounter with an
objective reality, whereas the pragmatists say subjects and objects are merely
derived concepts. It is known and had prior to designations like mind and
matter, subject and object, mental or physical. For the pragmatists these are
just the conceptual categories into which we sort experience. DQ or pure
experience contains all the elements that will later be conceptually sor
ted and designated.
Also, our pragmatists are quite deliberately rejecting ancient ideas about
Truth. Pragmatism is an alternative to the long standing idea that the truth is
whatever corresponds with the way things really are, the way reality really is,
apart from and beyond our experience. For the Platonists, the Forms were the
real reality and for Modern SOMers, the real reality is objective, physical
reality. Pragmatism rejects this correspondence theory of truth, rejects all
fixed and eternal truths and instead insists that experience IS reality. Truths
can only ever be the ideas that work successfully within experience and should
never be used to make claims about any reality outside of experience. These are
just metaphysical fictions, the pragmatists say, and philosophers have no
business talking about them. This is radical empiricism wherein the world just
is the world of pure experience itself.
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