DM: I agree overall this is a great post, well written, and shows how MOQ moves us to a better place than MOQ, but I have issues with it, and see some confusions in it, please see comments below.
dmb says: > > One way to approach this is to recall the question that started the > metaphysical ball rolling in the first place. Pirsig was just trying to teach > some teenagers how to write but a faculty asked him if undefined quality is > subjective or objective. Well, that's exactly where the answer would be > "neither this nor that". Subject-Object metaphysics says it has to be one or > the other and that the former isn't really real. Within SOM, quality is > usually considered to be "just" subjective. DM: So far so good. > > As we can see, I think, Marsha's half-baked invocations of DQ's > indefinability and constantly citing her own meditative experience has the > effective of turning the MOQ into some kind of solipsistic subjectivism. DM: Yes MOQ needs to avoid this, DQ and SQ is common to all experience, and SQ has levels, so that we can make sense of what exists prior to or when human experience is absent, because patterns can be thought about existing when there is no one around to experience them as they are stable and not dependent on SOM subjectivity for MOQ, although our understanding is entirely grounded in experience and imagination DMB: Thus the cure is re-infected with the disease; the MOQ is converted back into the worst kind of SOMism. This not only introduces the relativism and the "psychic solitary confinement" of SOM but it also turns Quality back into that whimsical and capricious "whatever you like". The MOQ is not just whatever you like. It is static, knowable, divisible, definable and intelligible, as any metaphysic must be. DM: Rather it is a metaphysics that includes these static qualities as key to experience and to making sense of experience. It is SQ that allows us to make sense of experience in a non solipsistic way, recognising patterns we experience in common with other people, and that these patterns can help us understand times and places we never directly experience, based on patterns we have experienced or had communicated to us by others as ideas. DMB: And that's what's really in dispute. Basically, Marsha cannot accept the idea that she, or anyone else, can be right or wrong about metaphysics. Sigh. So static patterns aren't necessarily real or true and DQ is just not this and not that. Nothing is real and nothing is right or wrong. > Pirsig says the MOQ is a "contraction in terms" precisely because metaphysics > must be definable and yet the whole thing is built around an undefined term. > And it's no accident, of course that this basic claim is reflected in the > MOQ's first and most basic distinction: static and Dynamic. The most succinct > statement about this distinction tells us quite simply and clearly that > concepts are static and reality is Dynamic. DM: yes concepts are static, but is not reality and experience both static and dynamic? A reality that is not at all static is a flux, sure you need concepts to recognise what is static about reality, but reality is full of processes and patterns with or without the addition of concepts, any suggestion that this is not the case sounds too much like subjectivism to me and implies solipsism. Yes all SQ must be seen as local and temporary, at bottom all reality is DQ, but if you see reality as devoid of SQ because SQ is too closely linked to concepts you give us no way to approach reality except as flux, you introduce SQ into experience as always bound to human concepts, and you separate SQ experience from reality. SQ is the basis of all science, SQ allows science to work with a perspective that builds on human experience to break out of human experience to tell a story of how human experience comes into being, although always grounded in the primacy of human experienc e. Recognising DQ and its primacy is right, it should allow us to contextualise all science and SQ, life is much more about openness and change than it is about stability and regularity. DMB: That sums it all up pretty well but that pithy little slogan is packed with meaning and import. Once this distinction is clear, the distinction between concepts and reality, everything else in the MOQ can be understood in that light. DM: sure this creates a clear cut, it does help to see how important pre-conceptual reality is, but seeing SQ as inseparable from concepts is to rob reality of bite, it means that we would not experience any patterns, any stable or repeating experience of colours before we have the concept of colour, yet scanned baby's brains recognise faces long before they can talk. Sure reality precedes concepts, but reality is full if patterns pre-concepts, it it what SQ concepts latch on to, it is what science studies and uses to improve and change existing concepts, to pretend all reality is flux is to make MOQ sound like prescientific magic, where we make reality with concepts, thus sounds too much like subjectivism, sure MOQ gives prominence to DQ but SQ is not just the building up of concepts, that is not keeping SOM out of the MOQ, subjectivism could happily embrace such a view of concepts. I think this approach does not clarify the MOQ it in the end causes it to collaps e. > DMB: One thing we really must NOT do, of course, is try to understand the MOQ's "reality" as objective or as a "reality" that is opposed to mere appearance, as Ron pointed out. DM: agreed DMB: One of the reasons we can rightly refer to subject-object dualism as a "metaphysics" is because subjects and objects are considered to be the primary realities which make experience possible. In philosophy they are the conditions for the possibility of experience, what reality must really be like prior to experience. Metaphysics is sort of infamous for making up all kinds of explanations involving structures of reality that underly appearance or are beyond the realm of experience. Pirsig doesn't do that. That's what he means when he says DQ is NOT a metaphysical chess piece. DM: Agreed, DQ is more like the board on which the game is played, many SQ moves and positions are possible, there are patterns but every game is different. DMB: In the history of metaphysics, this is pretty damn radical. To cut things into static and Dynamic is a big move. DM: Yes it is, it is great, but no need to tie SQ exclusively to concepts, a step in the wrong direction and yes all concepts are SQ nonetheless. DMB: The distinction between concepts and reality REPLACES the distinction between subjects and objects. DM: idealism and subjectivism distinguishes concepts and reality but embrace SOM, so does your idea of MOQ seems far too similar to idealism, what underlies concepts you call DQ, a Kantian would call this noumenon, other than a name change have you not just turned Kantian? Please explain how the MOQ you suggest remains radically different to Kant if SQ is no different from concepts? DMB: It replaces the distinction between appearance and reality. DQ is not intellectually knowable or definable but it is not beyond appearances. It is direct, everyday experience, the cutting edge of experience and we all know it directly at every moment. Obviously, we experience concepts too. They're quite familiar and knowable and not at all beyond appearances. DM: Well I agree that DQ is experienced and is not unknowable, that is a clear improvement on Kant, but whilst you bring DQ into experience you trap SQ into a human sphere, only humans can add concepts to experience, experience is formless without human concepts, Hegel and Kant would agree, but taking this step voids all the benefits of the idea of SQ I feel, it means that SQ is introduced to the cosmos by humans, that before humans there is no cosmos only flux, this makes the MOQ a small improvement on idealism and is not as radical an MOQ as I thought and hoped it was. DMB: In a very important sense, Pirsig's MOQ does not posit any metaphysical explanations or ontological structures that supposedly give rise to experience. Instead, the starting point is experience itself. Reality is experience itself. This is radical empiricism, where experience and reality are the same thing. And if we look to the hot stove example, it easy to show how "experience" is this sense is neither this nor that and yet it is quite real and directly known. DM: yes we need to get back to value, experience is grounded in what is good and what is valued as bad, but these are patterns we recognise, preconceptually we recognise what is of value, value is what concepts latch on to in our experience. > > "Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify > without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably > low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This > low quality is not just a vague, wooly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical > abstraction. It is an experience." (LILA) > DMB?: One might be unmoved by arguments about the effects of hot stoves on human flesh but experience will keep one honest because there's no arguing with reality. The one who refuses to listen to those static warnings will certainly get burned. DM: yes and we move without the help of any concepts, so do animals, and so do atoms when they capture electrons to complete theirs shells, activity and patterns long precede human concepts in the experience of all non-human experiencers. DMB Concepts lead us through experience well or badly and that's all that real or true can ever mean within the pragmatics of the MOQ. The MOQ rejects the correspondence theory of truth precisely because it construes truth as a representation of the "real" structure of reality. In the MOQ, reality is not a structure or entity of any kind but rather the ongoing process of experience itself. DM: yes SQ says nothing about structure only that there is structure in our experience, yes this is a process, all process has structure, otherwise it is flux, this is true long before culture and concepts emerge. DMB This reality is indefinite, an ever-changing flux, an aesthetic continuum, undefined yet always charged with value, either positive or negative, rightness or wrongness. DM: Value means distinction and pattern, so it is not pure flux, it is preconceptual, but the continuum is aesthetic, patterns have value preconceptually, flux alone has no value. > DMB And, as the hot stove example shows, we can even act on this value even before we have a chance to think about it DM, quite value has pattern, we move away, we know what direction to move in, no concepts required, only pattern, you think there is no pattern without concepts, this is not in accord with experience, it is a fantasy, please think again. DMB We respond to reality immediately all the time. DM, to respond you need pattern, flux cannot have value, directly experiencing good or bad is pattern without concept. DMB This is not some special mountain-top experience or even a particular meditative disciple. It the immediate of flux of life, direct everyday experience. DM, flux has no value, good and bad is distinction is SQ. As the native American mystics show, there's no need to make a big fuss about or turn it into some exotic esoterica. Zen ain't supposed to be fancy either, as in "just fixing," and both of these associations are consistent with the MOQ non-theoretical starting point: experience as such. > > This is the cure that kills the disease. It's static and knowable and > definable and we can contrast the MOQ with all the metaphysical systems that > put the real reality outside of experience. Experience is no longer merely > subjective nor is it contrasted with reality. Instead, experience IS reality > and all static concepts are derived from that experiential reality. > > Just one more point: > Please notice what happens to concepts in this view. Since they are all > derived from experience, they are all secondary formations, even the concepts > that supposedly stand for primary realities. There are many such concepts > even outside of philosophy. This includes subjects and objects, of course, > but also gravity and God, time and space, heaven and hell. In the MOQ, no > concept can rightly be taken as referring to a primary ontological reality. > This is the Copernican revolution writ large. Just as the astronomer's new > conceptualization virtually changed the very structure of the universe, the > MOQ arranges everything around a new center point. The MOQ puts everything > else in orbit around DQ. It's neither this nor that, but it's the focal point > of everything we can say about the MOQ. > DM, yes the MOQ can give us SQ and DQ based very simply on experience, but SQ does not need to be limited to concepts, human experience begins with DQ and patterns long before concepts arise, so does the cosmos, sure we use concepts to see this greater perspective on reality, but using SQ and DQ as ideas we can make sense of what evolved before concepts were created, this is the sense the MOQ can make of all processes, human or not, this allows MOQ to break out of idealism and sollipsism. Without this capacity MOQ abandons science and cosmology to SOM and its own likely extinction. > And this focal point, around which all of the MOQ's concepts are arranged, is > NOT Marsha's private pet or some room for which only she has the key. That > attitude is way too sanctimonious and it's as pretentious as a monkey in a > tux. > 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
