Dan,
okay, looks like I should've studied Lila's Child better. However, if
it's true that "matter comes before mind" and "mind comes before matter"
then the MOQ is inconsistent. Obviously, the MOQ is not intended to be
inconsistent. Furthermore, resorting to a notion of "complementarity"
doesn't make the MOQ consistent.
In order to make the MOQ consistent, the statements "matter comes before
mind" and "mind comes before matter" must be assigned to different
contexts. In the citations you provided, Pirsig seems to make a
rudimentary such assignment by implying that ontologically and/or
epistemologically mind comes before matter whereas morally matter comes
before mind.
But if it's moral to believe matter to come before mind it cannot be
moral to also believe mind to come before matter unless it's moral to be
inconsistent. And scientists are highly unlikely to find it moral to be
inconsistent.
Therefore Pirsig's rudimentary context assignment implies that the MOQ
is ontologically and/or epistemologically bad philosophy. Why would he
intentionally imply that? The implication seems unintentional.
A more appropriate context assignment would seem to be: "Subjectively
mind comes before matter but objectively matter comes before mind."
However, this implies that Pirsig's theory of static value patterns is
objective. Is that a problem?
Thank you very much,
Tuk
Dan:
Dubious? Moi?
"...Bohr’s “observation” and the MOQ’s “quality event” are the same,
but the contexts are different. The difference is rooted in the
historic chickenand-egg controversy over whether matter came first and
produces ideas, or ideas come first and produce what we know as
matter. The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces ideas,
which produce what we know as matter. The scientific community that
has produced Complementarity, almost invariably presumes that matter
comes first and produces ideas. However, as if to further the
confusion, the MOQ says that the idea that matter comes first is a
high quality idea! I think Bohr would say that philosophic idealism
(i.e. ideas before matter) is a viable philosophy since
complementarity allows multiple contradictory views to coexist."
[Robert Pirsig, Lila's Child, Annotation 67]
DG:
I would like to ask for clarification on a quote from page 178 of Lila
that also seems related to this: “So what the Metaphysics of Quality
concludes is that all schools of thought are correct on the
mind-matter question. Mind is contained in static inorganic patterns.
Matter is contained in static intellectual patterns.” The last two
sentences here seem to contradict the earlier division of
inorganicbiological as objective and the social-intellectual as
subjective, although, now armed with the information of these notes, I
sense it relates to philosophical idealism (ideas before matter)?
RMP:
Yes, the relationship of the MOQ to philosophic idealism is an
important one that is not adequately spelled out in Lila. In a
materialist system mind has no reality because it is not material. In
an idealist system matter has no reality because it is just an idea.
The acceptance of one meant the rejection of the other. In the MOQ,
both mind and matter are levels of value. Materialist explanations and
idealist explanations can coexist because they are descriptions of
coexisting levels of a larger reality.
The MOQ does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality as
composed of material substance and independent of us. It says it is an
extremely high quality idea. We should follow it whenever it is
practical to do so. But the MOQ, like philosophic idealism, says this
scientific view of reality is still an idea. If it were not an idea,
then that “independent scientific material reality” would not be able
to change as new scientific discoveries come in. [Dan Glover and
Robert Pirsig, Lila's Child]
It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although
“common sense” dictates that inorganic nature came first, actually
“common sense” which is a set of ideas, has to come first. This
“common sense” is arrived at through a huge web of socially approved
evaluations of various alternatives. The key term here is
“evaluation,” i.e., quality decisions. The fundamental reality is not
the common sense or the objects and laws approved of by common sense
but the approval itself and the quality that leads to it. [Robert
Pirsig, Lila's Child]
I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV paper that the key
to integrating the MOQ with science is through philosophic idealism,
which says that objects grow out of ideas, not the other way around.
Since at the most primary level the observed and the observer are both
intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes of quantum theory have to be
conflicts of intellectual assumption, not just conflicts of what is
observed. Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed
always involves an interaction with ideas that have been previously
assumed. So the problem is not, “How can observed nature be so
screwy?” but can also be, “What is wrong with our most primitive
assumptions that our set of ideas called ‘nature’ are turning out to
be this screwy?” Getting back to physics, this question becomes, “Why
should we assume that the slit experiment should perform differently
than it does?”
I think that if researched it would be found that buried in the data
of the slit experiment is an assumption that light exists and follows
consistent laws independently of any human experience. If so, the MOQ
would say that although in the past this seems to have been the
highest quality assumption one can make about light, there may be a
higher quality one that contradicts it. This is pretty much what the
physicists are saying but the MOQ provides a sound metaphysical
structure within which they can say it. [Robert Pirsig, Lila's Child,
Annotation 102]
Dan comments:
Hopefully, these sources will help further our discussion.
In chapter 12 of LILA Pirsig writes:
"Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of evolution than
social patterns of value."
A higher level of evolution does not come before a lower level of evolution.
Protozoa came before humans. What kind of ideas did they fathom?
Dan:
It is a good idea to believe protozoa came before humans. But since I
am not a protozoa, unless of course if you ask my ex, then I have no
idea what kind of ideas they fathomed.
Thank you,
Dan
http://www.danglover.com
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