Hello everyone On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 5:31 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > Arlo said: > You can argue that a better metaphysics must include pre-experiential > 'things/patterns/objects/existence', but we really need to be clear that > this IS "SOM", and that simply not using 'subjects' and 'objects' doesn't > change that. > > > Ron replied: > And I think that is what Pirsig does when he employs the 4 levels > explanation and evolution. Both concern the usefulness of pre-expeirential > concepts. His terms change but he's talkin' SOM in the inorganic and > biological levels which is what often causes quite a bit of confusion > around here, the use of Pirsig quotes becomes contradictory and a whole lot > of key strokes are spilled over a basic clarification of meaning. > > > > dmb says: > Yea, I think you guys are getting at the source of much confusion. > > Arlo is quite rightly identified the essential problem with SOM, a > pre-existing reality (to which our true concepts must correspond). And yet, > as Ron points out, the MOQ's four levels are supposed to represent > evolutionary stages of development wherein inorganic matter pre-exists the > human capacity for conceptualization by billions of years. This is the > basic problem, right? It seems to be a contradiction. > > Time and change are just basic concepts that emerge from Dynamic Quality, > not primary realities of their own and yet evolution is nothing but change > over time. So people wonder how to reconcile this or, much worse, they > don't see any need for reconciliation. In the latter case, there is no > conflict because Pirsig's levels of static patterns are just a new names > for the same old pre-existing "things" that SOM says they are. Being a > MOQer, in this case, is just a superficial change in lingo and not a real > change of mind or perspective. In this latter case, where the rejection of > SOM is little more than a banishment of the terms "subject" and "object", > the Copernican revolution fizzled out, got short-circuited, or otherwise > failed to materialize. > > As I understand it, the MOQ's levels don't divide reality into > evolutionary stages so much as they divide what's in the encyclopedia. > Pirsig says these levels include absolutely everything except DQ, which > means it includes absolutely everything except reality itself. That is > quite a lot to leave OUT of the encyclopedia, eh? > Dan: "In this plain of understanding static patterns of value are divided into four systems: inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social patterns and intellectual patterns. They are exhaustive. That's all there are. If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics-Inorganic, Biological, Social and Intellectual-nothing is left out. No "thing," that is. Only Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any encyclopedia, is absent." [Lila] Dan comments: Robert Pirsig states static patterns are all there are. In the MOQ, static quality patterns exist and make up the entirety of what we know as the world. No "thing" is left out. Dynamic Quality, which becomes synonymous with experience, is left out. The question then becomes, why is experience left out when the MOQ starts with experience? Experience is pre-conceptual. That is why there is always a lag between experience and recognition. Dr. Gurr seems to go into this a bit in the paper that Ant shared. William James also goes into this, which RMP quotes in Lila. Experience and our conception of experience are never identical. Once we have pigeon-holed experience into categories it is no longer experience. It becomes a memory of experience, or in the MOQ, static quality. > dmb: > It seems pretty clear to me that the MOQ's evolutionary levels are only > intended to organize our concepts and they should not be taken as a > description of reality as it is in itself. Dan: I'm pretty sure there is no reality 'in itself' in the MOQ: "Donny: "Kant thought that the applicability of math to experience posed a problem and therefore was a synthetic discipline. Hume (a British sceptic) had said that the scientific method was an a priori synthetic discipline and since such a thing was impossible—science yields no truth. In plainer words, can you have knowledge of (the world of) experience prior to experience? Hume says no, Kant says yes, Hegel gives a strenuous no and Pirsig says yes." RMP: Pirsig says no. [Lila's Child] Dan comments: I understand this to mean there is no 'world in itself.' The MOQ starts with experience. We can know nothing at all prior to experience. This is where D.H. and D.M are falling down. They believe a reality exists independently of experience which we experience. But in the MOQ, the static quality reality we know emerges from experience and yet is not part of that experience. dmb: > In the MOQ, that's is DQ and it is not definable. Dan: Well, this is partly correct. 'It' is both infinitely definable and and undefinable since the definition never exhausts it. "RMP: Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can be described is a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the definitions emerge, they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts it." [Lila's Child] Dan comments: This is why it is important to see how our definitions (static quality) emerge from experience and yet are not part of experience. dmb: > You're not going to find the primary empirical reality in the encyclopedia > and the immediate flux of life is not to be found in the dictionary, you > know? The evolutionary hierarchy of the MOQ does not divide the undivided > reality. It re-organized and re-cuts and re-imagines the ghosts, the > analogies, the knowable, definable, static patterns. The levels are just a > better way to handle our ordinary concepts, including "time" and "change", > both the common sense and scientific versions. Pirsig does not offer this > hierarchy as anything more than a better analogy. It is not supposed to > correspond to objective reality and we MOQers are supposed to realize that > reality itself is experience as such. Anything we say about that primary > empirical reality, the thoughts and the words that come after, will always > be secondary. And so it is with the MOQ and its four levels. The MOQ itself > is static, Pirsig says, and should not be confused with DQ, the > ever-changing reality that it talks about. > Dan: Yes this is correct. By using the term 'experience' in ways that do not comport with the MOQ we sow confusion and then follow those faulty interpretations to bad ends. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 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 > -- 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
