Hello everyone On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:14 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dan said to Krimel: > ...I suppose there isn't really a problem saying Dynamic Quality is > irrational. However, some of the negative connotations of irrationality might > mislead those who have yet to familiarize themselves with the MOQ. They might > think: oh, only mad people and crazy folk can fathom what Robert Pirsig is > saying. Or perhaps I am on about nothing. I don't know. > > dmb says: > That's pretty much what I was thinking but my version of this criticism goes > a bit further. Irrational does mean "not rational" but the term is very often > used pejoratively to characterize faulty reasoning, magical thinking, mental > illness, and the like. In fact, that's how the word is ordinarily used. > People say you're being irrational when you not making any sense or when > you're taking some silly superstition seriously. Knock on wood.
Dan: Yes that's right. I think I characterized irrationality as cognition without rationality. Further, I would say in our society it has come to mean someone who is loopy, a person who isn't all there, so to speak. But there are other definitions that might prove useful. >dmb: > Since "pre-conceptual" and "pre-intellectual" are also terms that mean "not > rational" but give us that meaning without the pejorative connotations or > misleading associations, those terms are much better at capturing Pirsig's > intention. The question driving the whole structure of the MOQ is, after all, > "what's good"? The MOQ is about morals, values, excellence. It's about what's > true and right and artful. And the whole structure of it is arranged around > DQ (pre-conceputal or pre-intellectual experience). I think it would be more > accurate to say that this primary empirical reality is neither rational nor > irrational but "pre-rational" seems okay. We don't need it because the terms > Pirsig uses are just fine but it doesn't carry the same negative baggage. > "Irrational" would be a bad substitute. Objections to this aren't really > overcome by pointing to the less common meaning of "irrational" (as > "non-rational" in a non-pejorative sense). That's the conceptual version of > escaping your criminal conviction on a technicality. I mean, unless the > purpose is to be pejorative, use of the term "irrational" in relation to > "Quality" or "Dynamic Quality" just shows bad rhetorical taste. It's the > wrong word in the sense that it's a bad artistic choice. Dan: I pretty much go along with this. What I think may have a bit of merit is irrationality as intuition, what we might call gut feeling. Searching Lila I could find no reference to intuitive thinking other than a short paragraph pertaining to Dusenberry. In ZMM, intuition is linked to 'grooving on it' and immediate perception, to the romantic mode: "A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance." "The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. 'Art' when it is opposed to 'Science' is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience." [ZMM] Maybe that's why Robert Pirsig doesn't go into it much at all in Lila. I don't think we can properly say intuition is pre-intellectual awareness yet it might be some of the first patterns to emerge. Inspiration and art are not rational and yet they aren't entirely irrational either. Rather, there is an intuitive quality which emerges from experience that has little to do with intellectual patterns, or classical ideas. > > > > > Krimel replied to Dan: > No, no I see your point. Again for me there is a sort of gestalt shift that > occurs when meanings get contrary and sort of oscillates. Pirsig sketches all > this kind of thing out but it is not as though all the details are there or > that he gets it right in every instance. I am a blind man touching elephants. > The places I can lay hands on the beast the more perspectives I have. The > elephant is "like" a rope or a wall or a tree trunk or... No single bit of > fondling can teach me about an elephant. The "elephant" emerges from the > process of touching. > > > > dmb says: > I see what you mean but I'd like qualify and clarify the basic idea. > > Like any philosophical view, the MOQ itself is static and should not be > confused with the Quality it talks about and around which it is focused. In > that sense, it's not clear what sort of elephant you are molesting. If we are > talking about DQ itself, then there is nothing to say. That's not something > that can be put into words or sent in an email. MOQ-DISCUSS accommodates the > metaphysics, the skilled manipulation of intellectual static patterns , but > not DQ as such. So let's say the elephant you're groping is static and in > particular you are looking to get your hands on as many different features as > you can so as to puzzle out what the thing really looks like. Dan: This is all good and I have no disagreements. I guess what I am getting at is: if we are relegated to only groping static quality patterns, how do we go about growing the MOQ? Are we doomed to continually repeat the same old mantras until we grow tired and give up? Perhaps this is where an intuitive take on the MOQ may be of value. I don't mean wallowing in irrational nonsense but rather recognizing there is more to the MOQ (and elephants) than just static patterns. Here is another quote from ZMM to back up my assertion: "Phædrus got this far with his concept of Quality because he deliberately refused to look outside the immediate classroom experience. Cromwell's statement, 'No one ever travels so high as he who knows not where he is going,' applied at this point. He didn't know where he was going. All he knew was that it worked. In time, however, he wondered why it worked, especially when he already knew it was irrational. Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn't know. This was the beginning of the crystallization that I talked about before. Others wondered at the time, 'Why should he get so excited about 'quality'?' But they saw only the word and its rhetoric context. They didn't see his past despair over abstract questions of existence itself that he had abandoned in defeat." [ZMM] Dan comments: What he seems to be saying is that rationality only goes so far. If new ideas and inspirations are to be given a chance to crystallize, perhaps intuition is better than rationalization. Maybe there are times when the rational solution simply will not work, no matter how carefully one plans their days and spends their nights laying out metaphysics and picking up bar ladies and rubbing elephants on their fat old behinds. >dmb: > To do that, you'd want to fondle as many descriptions as you can and in this > case what you mostly get are negative descriptions, by which I mean > descriptions that rely on saying what DQ is NOT. The first one is > "undefinable". That just tells you what it isn't; it is not definable. It is > not conceptual. It is not intellectual. It is not divided. It's undivided in > the sense that there are no conceptual or intellectual distinctions. Already > you can see start to infer the shape of this abused elephant, no? Pirsig also > calls it the "primary empirical reality" in contrast to concepts, which are > secondary. Dan: Yes, Lila is primarily a rational novel delineating the MOQ in a conceptual classical mode. ZMM, on the other hand, pays homage to the intuitive romantic mode which has been abandoned in Lila. I understand the 'why' behind this yet it seems as if something of value has been lost in the translation. We are left with Dynamic Quality, or pre-intellectual awareness, and static quality, which emerges from experience. Intuition has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle. It isn't really an idea and yet it isn't really pre-intellectual awareness either. Yes, I think it is secondary to experience, yet it seems to come before the rationalization. The way I understand it, Dynamic Quality becomes synonymous with experience and so in a sense it is definable. We cannot define 'it' in its entirety, however. The definition goes on and on. And once defined, static quality has emerged as experience has moved away from the definition. This seems to be a hang-up for a number of folk here who claim we experience static quality. No, we don't experience static quality. Rather, static quality emerges from experience. So if we do not experience static quality, do we experience Dynamic Quality? No, not if Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous. Again, this is not a proper question to be asking within the framework of the MOQ. Rather, all these concepts, including the term 'experience,' emerge from Dynamic Quality, which itself is an intellectual term to point to that which lies beyond definition. >dmb: > Then we can bring in terms from other philosophers, starting with the others > who are mentioned by Pirsig in relation to this same elephant. In ZAMM he > equates Northrop's "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" and Poincare's > "subliminal awareness" with his "Quality". In Lila he equates James's "pure > experience" and "immediate flux of life" with his own DQ. So we have a wide > variety of terms even within the primary texts. If you want to look outside > of those two books, there are even more ways to violate this beast. > > If you can read all those terms in such a way that they all mean the same > thing, in such a way that each term has the effect of illuminating and > clarifying the meaning of the others, then you know you've pretty well > discerned the basic shape of the thing. This is not meditation or mysticism. > It's a comparative analysis of the text's key terms and core concepts. An > analysis of just two of the terms used will preclude certain misconceptions > or misinterpretations. If somebody asks, "in what sense if this immediate > experience undivided?", you can answer by pointing to the term > "pre-conceptual" and explain that it "undivided" in the sense that it is > experience prior to conceptual distinctions, prior to the differentiations of > reflective consciousness. And then, hopefully, that somebody will say, "Oh, > that's what Northrop means by 'undifferentiated'!" And then you'll say, "yep, > you've got it". Dan: I am the first to admit that I find philosophology rather dry. I read very little philosophy but I do scribble a bit of it from time to time; I find many of Robert Pirsig's ideas leaking into my writings. On occasion I might Google a name just to get the gist of what they said. But yes, I can appreciate bringing the work of others to bear on the MOQ. Thank you, Dan http://www.danglover.com 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
