Here is Marsha's (incorrect and incoherent) definition/explanation of static
patterns of value:
Static patterns of value are repetitive processes, conditionally co-dependent,
impermanent and ever-changing, that pragmatically tend to persist and change
within a stable, predictable pattern. Within the MoQ, these patterns are
morally categorized into a four-level, evolutionary, hierarchical structure:
inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. Static quality exists in stable
patterns relative to other patterns: patterns depend upon ( exist relative to)
innumerable causes and conditions (patterns), depend upon (exist relative to)
parts and the collection of parts (patterns), depend upon (exist relative to)
conceptual designation (patterns). Patterns have no independent, inherent
existence. Further, these patterns pragmatically exist relative to an
individual's static pattern of life history.
Here is dmb's much simpler (and non-contradictory) definition of static
patterns:
Static patterns of value are deductions derived from experience.
dmb continues with textual evidence that supports and explains this simple
definition:
We can see this definition at work in Pirsig's answers, like Annotation 57 of
Lila's Child for example, where time and space are both referred to as being
"dependent" on experience and "deduced" from experience.
"In the MOQ time is dependent on experience independently of matter. Matter is
a deduction from experience."
In chapter 29 of Lila, Pirsig says the same thing about "subjects" and
"objects". They are not the starting points of reality, not the conditions that
make experience possible but rather they are static patterns. Pirsig and James
and all the other radical empiricists agree that they are concepts derived from
experience.
We also see this in the same annotation (57), where Pirsig elaborates on the
idea that time and space are both static concepts that depend on experience
because they're derived or deduced from experience (DQ). - Dan asked a
follow-up question; "Could you elaborate on what you mean by “independently of
matter”?
RMP replied:
I think the trouble is with the word, “experience.” ..It is more commonly used
as a subject-object relationship. ...In a subject-object metaphysics, this
experience is between a preexisting object and subject, but in the MOQ, there
is no pre-existing subject or object. Experience and Dynamic Quality become
synonymous. Change is probably the first concept emerging from this Dynamic
experience. Time is a primitive intellectual index of this change. Substance
was postulated by Aristotle as that which does not change. Scientific “matter”
is derived from the concept of substance. Subjects and objects are intellectual
terms referring to matter and nonmatter. So in the MOQ experience comes first,
everything else comes later. This is pure empiricism, as opposed to scientific
empiricism, which, with its pre-existing subjects and objects, is not really so
pure."
Please notice that in the MOQ "experience and DQ become synonymous" and
"everything else comes later". Please notice that "time" and "change" are
among the static concepts that come later. "Subjects and objects are
intellectual terms," he says, which is only consistent with his original claims
in Lila.
"The second of James' two main systems of philosophy, which he said was
independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism. By this he meant that
subjects and objects were not the starting point of experience. Subjects and
objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more
fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes
the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories'. In this
basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those
between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have
not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot be
either physical or psychical: It logically precedes this distinction." (Pirsig
1991)
Soi what is my point?
Marsha's definition is not only incorrect, it's a meaningless, verbose, and
incoherent jumble of nonsense that confuses and conflates the MOQ most basic
distinction, the distinction between concepts and reality. By confusing the
static and the Dynamic, apparently, she has come to the conclusion that
concepts and their definitions are undefinable. Marsha has also undermined the
intersubjective cultural context in which these concepts exist so that
definitions are "relative" to the individual's life history and not a shared
inheritance. The inability to share any intelligible meaning with other human
beings must be awfully lonely.
This is nihilism, relativism, solipsism - and it contains the same
contradictory nonsense I've been complaining about all along. (She says "static
patterns are ...ever-changing" here too.)
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