ROGER TRIES TO KEEP UP WITH RICH ON THE
DYNAMIC STATIC SPLIT
Hi Rich,
Love you man! And I love your free flowing style. Please allow me to jump
in with it.
[Rich]I would like to discuss what I consider at this point to be a Platypus.
A
radical one. I have been struggling to work out the connections between Mind
and Matter, Experience, Subjects, Objects and the Static / Dynamic split.
The emphasis is on Experience. That you and I are both having right now.
[Rog] Quit spreading such evil thots. EXPERIENCE HAS US!!!! :-)
[Rich]This description of the ongoing process of reality is carried into
Lila,
almost exactly substituting Dynamic for Romantic, and Static for Classic.
What I find this implies, and we've all seen posted about, is that
"everything" - that is, the entire universe of boxcars physical and mental -
exists only "in your head".
[Rog] No No No No No. Your head is an evil fiction too. YOU ARE A FICTION.
Modern science has BTW come to much the same conclusion as Pirsig. Read
anything by Daniel Dennett for examples of the fictional "Cartesian theatre".
Do you remember the zombie articles from December's LS? It has been shown
that people decide to do things before they are conscious of the decision.
Consciousness and the self are fictions that patterns of value called people
make up after the fact to explain what is happening.
[Rich]It seems that, re: that quote to Anthony, that
Pirsig understands the physical world to come into existence only AFTER
there is a thought pattern describing the undescribable Dynamic leading edge
of Qualitative Reality.
[Rog] No. He says the physical world YOU KNOW is a thought pattern. He does
not deny external reality, there is a big difference. He says what is
fundamentally unknowable and pre-intellectual is DQ. DQ is not a concept, it
is to borrow Keith's term, a place holder for linguistic reference.
[Rich]I don't like this. We've had lots of unsolved discussion around this
question. It just seems silly to me. And contradictory to the central tenet
of MOQ Ethics - EVOLUTION. We can't claim that intellect comes first in the
perception/creation of the world, and then claim that intellect evolved from
P, B and S. If we need the neurons and social language before the thoughts
can exist to generate analogous pictures of reality, then they MUST exist
first.
[Rog] Funny you should be so perceptive, .... This is what the subject is in
Anthony's paper to Pirsig. Ant pointed out the same platypus. Pirsig's reply
was that intellectual patterns of value are created via DQ. The most
logically consistant intellectual roadmap created to represent all this is a
metaphysics called the MOQ. But this is a roadmap that is not the terrain.
It is an evolutionary roadmap that works real well, and that by definition
will need to evolve along with knowledge. Now isn't it cool that as Lilacs,
we get to go back and change the past every time we improve our theory.
Omnipotence is cool. I am being facetious for the shock value that all we are
chatting about is concepts, not DQ......not REALITY. Reality is not
Newtonian or Einsteinian or quantum, it just is.
[Rich]Come on, guys, isn't this correct? Philosophize till your hanky falls
off,
and you will never convince anyone otherwise. It's obvious. Your are born
within the confines of physical laws, then your body develops a brain
through which you are then given a language through social relationships,
which then allows you to produce thought patterns to talk about all those
valuable experiences you've been having - positive and negative.
[Rog] NO, you evil necromancer! You spin a tale of deceipt. This is a
conceptual explanation.
[Rich] So, I offer this. Completely and Absolutely do away with this concept
of
"preintellectual cutting edge of reality". Ditch it. Now what do we see? It
eliminates the problem of which is "most" real - the track or the boxcars,
DQ or sq. Now we must consider this fundamental idea: that Quality is not
secondary
to reality, but rather that subjects and objects - thoughts and things -
revolve around the "sun of Quality". Temporally, Quality must come first.
I think that Quality DOES come first, and contradictorily to what I wrote
just above the last paragraph, it IS "preintellectual" experience.
[Rog] Ah, Beezlebub! Me thinks it is you who's hanky has fallen off.
[Rich]Yes.The process of reality DOES begin with "preintellectual"
experience.
Drag this concept back out of the ditch. HOWEVER, this experience which is
"preintellectual" is ALSO - this is important - ALSO - "prephysical",
"prebiological" and "presocial". The world doesn't pop into existence only
after you think about it. The physical world AND the mental world pop into
existence after you experience the Quality which generates the thoughts and
bodies. But NOT intellect, and THEN soc, bio and phys. Rather, it would seem
to me that, if one level comes first, it would be Physical(Inorganic) not
Intellectual. But I don't think that is right either. I think that they all
occur together, after Quality "decides" to experience itself in such and
such a manner.
[Rog] Closer. Let me clarify that Pirsig would not claim that the world
popped into existence, he would say that the concept of the world popped into
existence. All four levels pop in together out of DQ -- pre-intellectual
pure experience.
[Rich}So you, then, cannot solely be your thoughts, nor your body. You must
be
Quality, which is Experience, which Creates your thoughts and physical
movements. Hmmm.... You experience Yourself. funny. Is this what those crazy
Advaitin Vedantist Hindus mean by "Atman equals Brahman"? And "Tat Tvam
Asi"? Neat.
[Rog] Very, very close. Quality/Experience is one, and 'you' are a pattern
derived from Quality.
[Rich]Kev, you are right I think. Everything is ONE. However, can you see
this
ONE as being Quality - undivided? NOT Dynamic Quality, but just Quality?
Remember that we can split Quality in an infinite amount of ways.
This One, which is Quality, which is You the Self, may be understood quite
valuably as being static and Dynamic. Okay, good. But remember in ZMM how
upset Phaedrus was that the knife of subjectivity / objectivity split
Quality itself, leaving TWO kinds? Well, don't you see that that is what we
have been doing with static/Dynamic? We have been looking at these as very
different_ things, whereas they must be the same, yes? Or two sides of one
coin?
[Rog] Go Rich Go! Actually, I found another solution that Pirsig may have
missed. In reading mucho Radical Empiricism stuff this month, it dawned that
James gives a different answer. James states that subjects and objects and
things and thoughts (POV's) are not divisions of pure experience, they are
additions of pure experience. All is pure experience, and what we call POV's
are patterns of experiences.
As an example, stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Careful there, the
rocks are slippery..... Now close your eyes and listen. Experience the
sounds....wind....birds......traffic behind you....other tourists. Now
shout! Hear the loud sound.....Now listen to the
experience....birds....wind.....tourists....AND AN ECHO. and birds ...and
traffic...and echo...and tourists and wind and a dissappearing echo.
I suggest that sq is to experience what the echo was in the above. It is a
fainter, distorted version related to prior experience. It too is pure
experience, but it is related to past experiences. Pirsig calls DQ 'the
cutting edge' and sq 'the wake'. When thought of literally, they suggest the
same relationship. So maybe Pirsig didn't miss it.
[Rich]Well, I have found it well to now understand EVERYTHING as Quality,
just
Quality, that's all. Now, it may be described as static or Dynamic. But -
these don't have to be diametrically opposed "things". In fact, I can see
them as continuations of each other.
[Rog] Oh great! You now come to the same solution that I did. All IS good.
[Rich]This leads to the view that Quality is Graded. It exists in varying
Degrees: Quality is MORE or LESS Dynamic.
Which is EXACTLY the same thing as saying that:
Quality is MORE or LESS static.
The Difference is not one: Time-lengths, as given in ZMM to describe
Romantic and Classic.
Rather, it is a Difference of: Freedom. Freedom and Will. And the freer,
well, the more willed, and, well, the BETTER.
[Rog] I think I agree. Though I think throwing 'will' in muddies things a
bit. Experience differs and has similarities. Experience is pure quality
and by definition it is varying in degrees. I think a whole month could be
on this topic.
[Rich]Rog, remember we joked of Phaedrus being "prejudiced" against "s"Q?
Does
this help you eliminate that prejudice, by seeing sQ as not fundamentally
inferior and different than DQ, but rather just less Dynamic Quality? And
Dynamic Quality as just less static?
[Rog] Very much so.
You are my hero!!!!
Smooch,
Rog
PS -- This really should be in the LS discuss rather than the MOQ discuss.
Oh well.....
******"Comedy is the devil seeing himself in the mirror"********
FD
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