dmb says: No, I think patterns and concepts are one and the same. And I believe babies and animals can respond to experience without concepts.
DM replies: So you think animals and babies respond to DQ which is undifferentiated, yet babies respond differently to different things, mother versus non-mother people, and animals eat very specific foods, seek out specific environments, your understanding looks horribly problematic to me. How does MOQ explain a peacock's tail? No pattern in the tail that attracts females according to you? dmb says: You wrongly believe that the shapes and forms you perceive are simply given to your senses and then conceputalized but the shapes and forms are concepts that shape your perceptions. DM replies: Yes colours are givens of experience, and so are other unavoidable experiences, take optical illusions, can you reconceptualise these so you cannot see them, no you can't, how then can you explain these? DMB: You think realism means having to put those shapes and forms in the outer world, already there waiting to be percievers. No, we created all of that. We all learn these shapes and forms as we acquire the language, etc DM replies: No, if we start with experience we find that it is full of patterns, shapes, constant change, constant coming and going. Vast phenomenological literature covers all this better than Pirsigs two books, unlike James I prefer patterns to percepts and avoid all talk of perceivers and perceived. At the level of experience there is no separation, seems you can't remember what I have said when it does not fit into your conceptual framework, so all experience is the being that we are, I am sure you must have heard of Dasein ever round your way. Now for me as I have said rather often, realism is a high level idea that is the best way to understand our experience, so that we conceive that biscuits in biscuit tines still exist, still keep going stale, when we can't see them, but perhaps in your mystical wonderland you prefer some good idea about them popping in and out of existence until you open the biscuit tin. So if we never acquire language we would never see sny shapes or forms or colours, very problematic, you could at least argue that all percepts are a form of language to try and make more sense, no need to thank me for trying to help you argue your view. dmb says:Okay, you're looking for "patterns" in the experiential flux because you IMAGINE this flux to be chaotic and meaningless like an "ink blot" or "white noise". DM: No I say that is your view, to correct it we need to recognise experience is full of patterns and not undifferentiated. Complex, overlapping, changing but not an undifferentiated flux, I am saying you seem to want to have your cake and eat it. DMB: Nobody says that. We even have Pirsig on record explicitly denying that DQ is like "chaos". Quite the contrary. Empirical reality is the ultimate bullshit detector. DM: Totally undifferentiated yet not a chaos? Totally undifferentiated yet you can use it to differentiate between bullshit and non-bullshit? You can tell if the stove is hot or not, but no pattern involved, no binary 0 or 1 switch here for you, it is pure undifferentiated reaction, you move without any awareness of the sort of experience that is obliging you to move, undifferentiated all experienced are surely all the same, is that a fair summary of your view? Makes sense does it? Sense? Appropriate word is it not? DMB: That's where our intellectual descriptions live or die. We can't just make stuff up or be whimsical. I mean, rejecting subject-object metaphysics doesn't mean rocks suddenly have no weight or that knives can't cut me. Rejecting the metaphysics of substance doesn't mean I stop obeying traffic signs. The primary empirical reality is not some other world, it is the basis of everything we think about reality. I do mean WE. All the shapes and forms of the world, including yourself, is part the mythos. DM replies: knives cut, rocks are heavy, is that empirically the case for you or is it mythos, or are you saying everything empirical is inseparable from mythos, pretty odd use of the word empirical. Can we EVER use evidence or data to determine the validity of ideas and concepts in your view? dmb says: You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. DM: yes not for you if you can't see it. DMB: The MOQ's evolutionary hierarchy is quite seamless in this respect; everything is capable of responding to DQ to various degrees, even subatomic particles. DM replies: So how do electrons decide to respond to protons but ignore neutrons? DMB: And, sadly, your weird version of DQ as "white noise" or an "ink blot" could have been avoided if you have understood that "unpatterned" simply means "unconceptualized" and NOT "chaotic" or whatever. DM replies: I see, you are saying DQ is full of patterns but you can't see any until you say abracadabra, if it is all undifferentiated why do you not respond to all experience in the same way? DMB: And you just don't personally like the "interpretation all the way down" to DQ thing. Sorry, but that's what the guys says and that's MOQ is. This part is difficult to accept, I guess. Sounds like madness, but he left it in, didn't he? DM: Funny how anything you believe must be hard to understand and requires some special insight to grasp it, what bluster, yes I understand your view, it is nothing very difficult thanks, but does it work can you answer every point I raise above, does it have all the problems that belong to post-modernism and have been found wanting? Is it really valid to call it empirical? How do we recognise change without a primary experience of some regularity or sameness or endurance that changes, so that qualities come and go and call our attention in the openness of experience. Of course we could start rereading Being and Time and get off of this passive experiencing theme we are stuck on and realise Dasein is much more an acting-experience where nothing stands out in experience and we are lost in our projects realising what is possible, but hey, Pirsig has entirely failed to even get on that page. What does the MOQ have to say about the unconscious, the MOQ is great, but far from complete in its analysis of experience, not seeing this is the path to marginalisation and irrelevance I fear, more DQ less static stuckness would be a good idea I suggest. 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