djh said to Ron:
... From this Dynamic Quality perspective static quality is degenerate.
....Folks do experience DQ. All the time. Even if calling it a 'perspective' is
wrong - this doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that we cannot
intellectually talk about it. ...There are different pespectives of the MOQ
dmb. There is the intellectual perspective which you seem to be stuck in. And
there is also a 'perspective' of the MOQ which is *outside*, *before* and
actually the 'perspective' which *creates* the intellectual level. This is the
non-'perspective' of DQ. To repeat myself - the MOQ *expands rationality* by
including this 'perspective' and other value perspectives as part of its
metaphysical structure. From a DQ or strictly mystic understanding - static
quality is evil and degenerate. RMP and myself can intellectually say that.
Why can't you?
dmb says:
Let me try this again. You are equating quality and evil. Static quality is
evil? This short phrase defies the meaning of the term "quality" and so it's
obviously a very bad reading of Pirsig. The trick is to try to figure where you
went wrong. This is going to demand a focus on the relation between DQ and sq.
We could also call this the relation between the mystical perspective and the
intellectual perspective.
Firstly, it's easy to see that you're having trouble trying to present the
non-perspective perspective. There is no doubt that Pirsig is putting DQ at the
center of the MOQ. I don't think anyone is saying DQ doesn't exist and nobody
is denying that this centrality is key to Pirsig's expansion of rationality but
you seem to be quite confused as to how this all fits together. The effect of
your conclusion not only fails to improve and expand intellectual static
quality, it ends up being quite hostile to this aim.
In an old essay at moq.org Ant answered the question, "how is Dynamic Quality
differentiated from static quality?"
"Dynamic Quality is the term given by Pirsig to the continually changing flux
of immediate reality while static quality refers to any concept abstracted from
this flux". Dynamic Quality "can only be understood properly through direct
apprehension" and so "Dynamic Quality can't be defined as such and that true
understanding of it can only be given through a mystic experience such as
enlightenment." THAT is why "we cannot intellectually talk about it" and that
is why Pirsig can say that a metaphysics of Quality is absurd. You can't talk
about that which is prior to language. You can't define the preintellectual
source of all definable things because talking requires definitions and
philosophical talking requires intellectual distinctions. This is the
relationship that MUIST be understood in order to understand the issue of
degeneracy. As Herbert Guenther puts it with respect to the "Ultimate" in
Buddhism, DQ "is something knowable, though not known by theory or discursive
method, but by direct experience."
This is perfectly consistent with the things that Pirsig says in his books and
commentaries. In Lila's Child he says the MOQ itself is static and should be
kept separate from the Quality it talks about. Likewise, in a 1997 letter to
Ant, Pirsig says, "It's important to keep all 'concepts' out of Dynamic
Quality. Concepts are always static". Both books are full of similar lines.
Once they get into Dynamic Quality they'll overrun it and try to present it as
some kind of a concept itself. (For instance) I think it's better to say that
time is a static intellectual concept that is one of the very first to emerge
from Dynamic Quality. That keeps Dynamic Quality concept-free."
This is also perfectly consistent with Pragmatism and with the second aspect of
Mahayana Buddhism, wherein "it is emphasised that objects are only
conceptualised (or constructed) aspects of experience. This is basically what
the MOQ says from its Dynamic (or mystic viewpoint)." Did you catch that?
That's big. Objects aren't really objects but rather they are concepts derived
from experience. That's what Pirsig, James and Buddha are all saying about
static patterns. This is NOT a metaphysics of substance but a metaphysics of
Quality so that static patterns are just concepts, not things, not pre-existing
realities but aspects of an indeterminate experiential reality that have been
conceptualized.
This is crucial to understanding the switch from SOM to the MOQ. The MOQ
doesn't completely reject subjects and objects as CONCEPTS but as the
metaphysical starting points of reality. The trick is to realize that they are
JUST concepts, to realize that they are aspects of experience that have been
conceptualized. As Ant put it,..
"There are no objects or subjects as traditionally thought within the MOQ.
However, for pragmatic reasons it conceptualizes reality into four patterns of
static quality. ..However, both metaphysical systems are just ways of
conceptualising (or dividing) our experience and neither are necessarily more
truthful than the other. From a mystic point of view, to say quality patterns
are more truthful or false than subjects and objects is meaningless."
This so-called "mystic" point of view is already expressed and represented in
the MOQ's theory of truth. Not only in the sense that truth is always
subordinate to intellectual quality and DQ but also in the sense of being
pragmatic, pluralistic, provisional and generally a helluva lot more flexible.
"If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality," Pirsig says,
"then we're permitted only one construction of things - that which corresponds
to the 'objective' world." By contrast, the MOQ “does not insist on a single
exclusive truth," Pirsig says, and "one doesn't seek the absolute 'Truth'. One
seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the
knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be
taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along." On this
view, truth and knowledge are not supposed to define reality, which is
indeterminate and undefinable. Truth and knowledge do not exist in relation to
a realm beyond our experiences, they do not correspond to fixed and eternal
realities. Instead, truth and knowledge are just concepts, just human
constructions derived from experience and they are expected to grow and evolve
just as we do. Just as Euclidian geometry isn't truer than non-Euclidian
geometries, just as polar maps aren't any less true than regular maps, "saying
that a MOQ is false and a SOM is true is like saying that rectangular
coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false." This is what it means to
have a pluralistic theory of truth. It does NOT mean each person has their own
truth. It means that "truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger
entity called Quality". Truth is not supposed to correspond to a determinate
reality but rather it is convenient within experience. Truth evolves along with
our aims, purposes and problems.
See, it's not simply a matter of any and all static patterns being degenerate
and evil, not even from the higher perspective (mystical or pragmatic). I mean,
let us take account of the entire sentence, if not the broader context, of your
so-called evidence.
"Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of
all things, completely simple and always new. ...It's only perceived good is
freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality itself - any pattern of
one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and kill the ongoing free force of
life."
See, this is why evolution should be an important pivot point when talking
about the meaning of degeneracy in the MOQ. Degeneracy is devolution, is a kind
of regression or a blocking of evolution. The moral codes of the MOQ are
designed to protect the ongoing evolutionary process, right? That's WHY the
intellectual level is the highest level of static quality; because it is the
most evolved and the most open to evolution. This is especially true for Pirsig
expanded notion of rationality. So degeneracy has to be understood within the
framework of this evolutionary morality. Think of it as "un-generate". The word
comes from Latin "degeneratus", meaning ‘no longer of its kind,’ from the verb
degenerare, from degener ‘debased,’ from de- ‘away from’ + genus, gener- ‘race,
kind.’ In this case, the kinds we are talking about are levels of quality. As a
verb, it means "decline or deteriorate physically, mentally, or morally". As an
adjective it means the decline of disintegration of the physical, mental, or
moral qualities considered normal and desirable or lacking some property,
order, or distinctness of structure previously or usually present. It's a kind
of rot or decomposition or degradation. The code of art is NOT used to condemn
or prohibit intellectualism but to protect the evolution intellectual static
patterns themselves. Pirsig says this in both of his books....
"I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of
Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.
It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific
practice." (ZAMM, p. 281-2)
"...the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force
that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a
brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one - is another matter
altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific
truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress
Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method.
Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of
scientific progress itself." (LILA, p. 365-6)
By the same token, DQ is not supposed to be at odds with philosophical
discussion. As with science, Pirsig's metaphysics contains "a formal
acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the thinking process itself. This is
how rationality is expanded and strengthened. The structure of the MOQ
surrounds this expansion and goes with it but its this acknowledgment that
intellectual patterns exist within and are subordinate to Quality that really
makes the difference.
And that's why anti-intellectualism - as the MOQ construes intellect - no
longer makes any sense.
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