ROGER APPRECIATES DAVID'S
GREAT CHALLENGE TO DQ AS THE
FABRIC OF EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE
Hi gang!
Sorry in advance if I sound dogmatic. This is one of those issues that needs
to rise to the surface.
THANK YOU DAVID! Someone has finally recognized my concern with the "Dynamic
Event" versions of the MoQ. This is my term for those that view DQ as a wild
crash of lightning or a brilliant act of creation or the deadly impact of a
K2 meteorite. Don't get me wrong, these are ultimately composed of DQ just
as is everything else, but what makes them great models of DQ is that they
clearly disturb our static patterns.
Below is my understanding of the MOQ:
1) DQ is everyday Direct Experience, by which we mean pre-subject and
pre-object and pre-conceptual.
2) sQ is subjectified and objectified patterns. These are conceptual
models that are our best representations of pre-conceptual experience.
DAVID B REPLIES:
DQ is Direct Experience, I agree, but by adding the word "everyday"
you've completely changed the meaning. Pirsig never described as
"everyday" direct experience.
ROGER:
How about in Lila P419- "It is direct everyday experience."
This above quote is a culmination of his discussion tieing Pragmatism and
Radical Empiricism to the MOQ. On P 417 Pirsig writes: "Subjects and objects
are secondary. THEY ARE CONCEPTS DERIVED FROM SOMETHING MORE FUNDAMENTAL
WHICH HE (James) DESCRIBED AS "THE IMMEDIATE FLUX OF LIFE WHICH FURNISHES THE
MATERIAL TO OUR LATER REFLECTION WITH ITS CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES." In this
basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as
those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter,
have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them."
Or there is page 418 where he again quotes James: " There must always be a
discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and
discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing."
On P428, he calls DQ "The base of reality"
Similar quotes can be found on page 90, 131, 132, 134 ("DQ is the
pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of all things,
completely simple and always new"....and "The front edge of his experience is
dynamic.").
Or how about this one from P 134 "The ongoing Dynamic edge of ALL EXPERIENCE,
BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, EVEN THE DYNAMIC EDGE OF THOUGHT ITSELF"
Or on page 134 where he references "the DQ all around you.."
One of the great truths behind this philosophy, as well as the truth's of
Radical Empiricism, the Zen Philosophers and Alfred Whitehead (Whitehead uses
"relation" rather than "quality"), is that DQ is not some rare, esoteric
event. Our recognition of it might be, but in essence, it is not. It is the
continuous "stream of quality events".
DAVID CONTINUED:
That's why the hurricane, the heart attack
and the new song can open us up to DQ, becasue they are uncommon,
unusual and not "everyday" kinds of experiences. Pirsig describes what
he thinks is happening in such "dynamic" circumstances on PAGE 374,
where he says,"The value of shock treatment (according to the MOQ) is that it
destroys
all patterns, both cultural and private, and leaves the patient
temporarily in a Dynamic state."
And please notice that it isn't hurricanes, hearth attacks of electro
shock therapy that is itself Dynamic, it is that this extra-ordinary
events can leave us "temorarily in a Dynamic state."
ROGER:
All your examples are correct, but your interpretation is as limiting as your
definition of DQ. The raw dynamicness of these events does indeed shine
through. We have not yet created old static patterns to veil them. In
reality, all is dynamic, however, we filter the experience and live not in
the Direct Experience of the base of reality, but in the static world of our
concepts and models. You are essentially right David that everyday experience
does not come across to most of us as dynamic. But that is not that it is
static, it is because we veil the inherent dynamicness behind our static
conceptual veils. Pirsig describes the essential dynamicness of everyday
experience and our ability to develop conceptual patterns when he explains
the infant's attention. Over time it creates "repetitive patterns of
correlations....called an object......Only when the shift doesn't work or an
*object* turns out to be an illusion is one forced to become aware of the
deductive process." But the static patterns are indeed a deductive process.
DAVID:
Your understanding of static patterns as "conceptual models" is only
partially true. Inorganic, biological and social static patterns of
value are not conceptual models. They are levels of reality that are
quite distinct from the intellectal level, which certainly has
conceptual models of all these levels. This error is the main source of
the quasi-Solipsistic postion you've taken on these matters. Static
patterns aren't just concepts, they are the world.
ROGER:
I think my above Pirsig quotes show that the MOQ does view them as derived
concepts. There is also of course this quote which you continue to say makes
no sense, but which makes perfect sense in the correct harbor:
PIRSIG:
"Experience in a SOM is an action of the object upon the
subject. In the MOQ, experience is pure Quality which
gives rise to the creation of intellectual patterns which
in turn produce a division between subjects and objects.
Among these patterns is the intellectual pattern that says
"there is an external world of things out there which are
independent of intellectual patterns".
That is one of the highest quality intellectual patterns
there is. And in this highest quality intellectual
pattern, external objects appear historically before
intellectual patterns...
But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself comes
before the external world, not after, as is commonly
presumed by the materialists."
DAVID:
Static patterns of value at the intellecual level certainly include
conceptual models, like the MOQ itself or any other philosophy, but that
is only one fourth of the world.
ROGER:
Nope. The world is again DQ or sq, as you said in the beginning. Sq is all
conceptual (however, our positions are not that far apart, because concepts
and material things are not mind or matter, they are both
QUALITY...right?)Pirsig explains this simplification of the model as such:
PIRSIG:
When we speak of an external world guided by evolution it's normal to assume
that it is really there, is independent of us and is the cause of us. The MOQ
goes along with this assumption because experience has shown it to be an
extremely high quality belief for our time. But unlike materialist
metaphysics, the MOQ does not forget that it is still just a belief - quite
different from beliefs in the past, from beliefs of other present cultures,
and possibly from beliefs we will all have in the future. What will decide
which belief prevails is, of course, its quality.
ROGER:
As for your patterns-contained-in-patterns analogies, I would agree that
conceptually that is how the MOQ works. But this is just a conceptual model
again.
And this time I am right.... :-)
Roger
PS -- I also sent some additional material to support my position to David.
If anyone still disagrees (lurkers are strongly welcome, I would like to talk
to you too), let me know and I will send you a private copy. I would also
refer you to first read ZMM p221-223 .
PPS -- Never trust anyone that is dogmatically convinced he is right!
PPPS -- HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
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