David Morey said to dmb: ...Currently I think my views fit with those of Pirsig just fine, but if you can show me otherwise I am happy to accept that I am not, and am happy to have my own views and reasons for doing this, but that's yet to be demonstrated to me, but I have no problem with such disagreement. How about you DMB? I feel that you present your views as a follower of Pirsig and would not be very happy if your interpretation could be shown to be unsupported by or in conflict with that of Pirsig, is that a fair comment? That is not a criticism but I just wanted to make it clear that I am happy to give my interpretation of the MOQ as my own, and if it cannot be shown to accord with Pirsig's view of the MOQ then I am happy to offer it as my own version...
dmb says: I think the purpose of the forum is to discuss Robert Pirsig's books or anything that helps to illuminate Pirsig's work. You're free to try to create something better but that's not what I'm talking about. And even if you were going to try to improve on Pirsig's work, I think it would be a mistake to launch that new project on a misinterpretation of the thing you're trying to improve. In any case, I'm just talking about what Pirsig does and does mean to say in his books. Anything else is literally a different topic. Talking about two separate topics at the same time is bound to be an exercise in frustration and confusion. Please, let's not do that. Let's just stick with the MOQ. I am, afterall, making a case that the central terms have been widely misunderstood. It's not just you, Dave. Lots of people are making the same basic mistake, I think. Mostly, I blame Marsha. She has been poisoning the forum with incoherent nonsense for years and her central error is confusing and co nflating those central terms too; static and dynamic. Okay, let us get to the substance of the matter. "There must always be a discrepancy between concepts [static quality] and reality [Dynamic Quality], because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality." DM replied to the quote: Is the use of SQ and DQ in square brackets above done by you or Pirsig? If Pirsig are you asserting that for Pirsig SQ is always based in concepts rather than in reality? dmb says: Yes, brackets indicate an addition to the quote. I believe that is standard practice. But it was just meant to be helpful, to emphasize the point that is being made anyway. Look at the quote again without any bracketed addition and you can see that both Pirsig and James are already using these central terms without any help from me. "There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are STATIC and discontinuous while the latter is DYNAMIC and flowing.' Here James had chosen EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS Phaedrus had used FOR THE BASIC SUBDIVISION of the Metaphysics of Quality." DM continued: ...What is it then that the concepts are tying together when we conceive the bananas as similar? Does similarity/pattern not exist in experienced reality only in concepts? Are concepts not part of reality in your interpretation of the MOQ (and as per Pirsig in the above quote)? Are you saying SQ=concepts and DQ=reality, implying that SQ is not part of reality? Is this not a dualism of concepts on the one hand and reality on the other? dmb says: I believe that I had already answered that in the next paragraph when I said, "By reality, as we can see from the paragraphs leading up to this quote, Pirsig and James simply mean experience, specifically pure experience, pre-conceptual experience, the immediate flux of life. This is not to say that concepts are non-existent but to say the concepts are not to be confused with that primary experiential reality. Concepts are secondary additions, which we add to experience, use to guide experience, and to define the salient aspects of experience." That's what the concept "banana" is "tying together", as you put it - the experiences are similar enough that we can employ a generalization to refer to these salient features of experience. That's what it means to say the concept is derived from experience. This is the BASIC SUBDIVISION, the first cut, the first distinction and involves two terms, so yes, I guess it would be fair to call it a dualism. But the MOQ is also a monism and static quality is further divided into four. And again, the distinguish concepts and reality is not to say to deny the existence of concepts but rather a matter of asserting a priority of experience over concepts. It's a way of asking us NOT to confuse our IDEAS about reality with reality itself. This is the same section of Lila where he explains James's radical empiricism, saying... "...subjects and objects are not the starting points 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 called either physical or psychical: it logically precedes this distinction." See, so in subject-object metaphysics it is assumed that the banana in itself is the object which causes us to have a preception and then a concept of banana. Pirsig and James are rejecting that idea. There are no bananas in themselves. See, what a lot of people do is convert the MOQ back into a metaphysics of substance wherein static patterns are taken as objects. Not in the MOQ, where even "objects" and "things" are never reality itself but secondary concepts that emerge only after we sort experience into conceptual categories. In this way, the MOQ is one giant anti-reification program. (Reification is an error wherein abstractions are mistaken for concrete realities, wherein concepts are mistakenly believed to be primary independent beings. DM said: .... Sure all concepts are SQ I agree. But is all SQ conceptual? Are not the levels below the intellectual not forms of non conceptual SQ? I would have thought that is what Pirsig is saying? Do you agree? dmb says: No, I don't agree and this disagreement is quite central. This is THE point I want to make. Even inorganic static quality is an idea. "Rock" is an idea. "Atom" is an idea. To see these things as substantial realities is to reify those concepts. That's the mistake that continues to plague MOST of the people in this forum. Static patterns are just analogies, the whole world of definable things is just one great big pile of analogies, not reality itself. DQ is the source and substance of everything, of all those analogies, of every concept and every entry in the encyclopedia, of every word in the dictionary. DM continued: ... If so then an organic pattern in two separate bananas could be experienced, especially if you are looking at two bananas and seeing they are the same, pre-conceptually, pre-linguistically I assume that is possible. How would you put it? dmb says: There is no such thing as a preconceptual banana. By the time you can call it a banana, you're already in the realm of the conceptual and the linguistic. That's what Pirsig is saying when he says, "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." "Banana" is just one of those distinctions of reflective thought. It's one of "the forms which we make" and does not yet exist in "the basic flux of experience". That what I was getting at when I complained; "By saying that a banana is a "pattern we can experience" you've undone the distinction." The pattern "banana" doesn't cause the experience, the experience causes the banana. DM said: Obviously I know that already, but we develop the word and concept to recognise a pattern that we are experiencing pre-linguistically are we not? dmb says: No, there is no such thing as a pre-linguistic or pre-conceptual pattern. That is a case of mixing up the two elements, of conflating or confusing the central terms. All static patterns are conceptual and pure experience is never conceptual. This is another way of saying that Dynamic Quality is never static and static quality is not dynamic. Static and Dynamic are opposite terms in the sense and phrases like pre-linguistic pattern or ever-changing static pattern (Marsha's phrase) are nonsense. It's like saying "liquid ice" or "temporary permanence". It's not just a different way to interpret the MOQ. It's just flat-out wrong. It's simply contradictory and illogical. DM: ... Maybe better to talk of pre-conceptual and post-conceptual experience, but it is all experience. What is the point of seeing concepts (a form of SQ obviously) as not part of experience, I mean are you experiencing this wordy conceptual conversation? Sure there is the primary pre-conceptual level of experience, but is it only dynamic before it is concpetual? Is not the pre-conceptual also static and SQ patterned at times? Otherwise how were there any patterns that formed the inorganic and the inorganic before human beings came along to conceive the MOQ? Was not the reality of SQ and DQ forming the cosmos before human beings came along? dmb says: Nobody is saying that concepts are outside of experience or that they are not part of experience. Like you say, that's what we're experiencing right now. The idea here is simply to distinguish PURE experience from the concepts that follow from it. Pure experience is pre-conceptual but, of course, concepts are not pre-conceptual. Anyone can see the contradiction in a phrase like "pre-conceptual concepts" right? Just as with the word "reality", Pirsig is NOT saying that concepts are unreal or non-existent. That would be a very absurd claim because you absolutely need words and concepts to make any claim including that one. Yes, experience is dynamic only before it is conceptual, at which point it becomes static. That's WHY we can NOT define DQ; definitions are conceptual and DQ is pre-conceptual. It is prior to any and all definitions. That's what "primary" means, the first and most basic reality, the experiential reality from which all static patterns are derived. The whole world, every last bit of it. Yes, it sounds like madness but that's what Pirsig is saying. And it seems that Marsha (and others) is doing everything she can to make sure that people do not get this, to make sure everybody else continues to be as confused and wrong as she is. Don't listen to that nonsense. It's drivel. It's poison. It's wrong. DM said: ... if you disagree fine, but let's try to see clearly why and where this disagreement is. Or we can do jokes and insults which is fun too. dmb says: Don't take my frustration too personally, David. Like I said, I've been trying to make this point for years now (literally) and so you're sort of walking into the middle of a very old argument and you just happened to take up the position of my enemies, just happen to be making the same basic mistake that I've tried to correct a thousand times (literally). As I see it, this problem should have been taken care of a long. long time ago and it should have taken about five minutes. Sadly, it's more like ten years without zero progress. Like I said, mostly I blame Marsha. And Bo. If I said out loud what I really thought of her, it would make Satan blush. > 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
