ROGER REPLIES TO JOHN ON HIS
VERSION OF THE MOQ
John,
Please do not take this post wrong. We have different opinions. You see
fallacies and inadequacies in the MOQ and have suggested improvements. I see
your concerns with the MOQ as fundamental misunderstandings. I do not think
you have gone deep enough into the full ramifications of the philosophy. I
encourage you to do so.
I am absolutely sure that I am not 100% correct. By stating my assumptions,
I encourage you and every other member of the forum to point out the areas of
lower quality and help me make improvements. The day I come to this forum and
can no longer find any defects in my thinking is the day I will no longer
value this forum. Hopefully you will take my suggestions the same way.
JOHN:
What is not justified, though,
are assertions about Quality infusing or directing inorganic patterns. In my
view we do not
have experience at any level that can justify such statements. We do have
intellectual
constructs (science, physics, etc) which purport to explain the behaviour of
the inorganic
realm, but in reality there are a host of competing theories, each with some
supporting
'evidence', but none proveable. It is fashionable to asume a match between
quality and our
current understanding of fundamental physics which in my view is quite
tenuous. If by Pirsig's
statement you mean "Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world as
experienced by
us" then I guess I agree, but I doubt that this is what Pirsig means.
ROGER:
Science is no longer a search for one absolute Aristotelian truth, it is a
search for the highest quality explanation of reality. And right now the
highest quality interpretations of reality are Quantum Physics and General
Relativity. Both are 100% consistent with the MOQ's assumption that matter
and energy and inorganic reality are composed of value interrelations.
JOHN:
Pirsig says there is an "inorganic-chaotic" code of morals (Lila Ch 24), and
he says "weak
Dynamic forces at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge
static
inorganic forces ... by selecting superatomic mechanisms" and so on (in Ch
11), in what I can
only interpret as an attempt to shape a complete metaphysics, but how this
could be
validated, or even just what it means, I do not know. I am not an Idealist,
if by that is meant
nothing exists outside our ideas, but I think it is fair to say that what
exists outside our
experience is at best conjecture based upon both experience and our mental
operations
upon our static residue of that experience. Pirsig goes much further than
this.
ROGER:
Again, current theories of life agree with this. I summarized some in my
post last week, but you never addressed these head on. My entire post is
reattached on the bottom of this one, and I would appreciate any specific
feedback.
JOHN:
I am
beginning to suspect that the intellect is directly responsible for the
"secret loneliness" that
Pirsig laments (at the end of Ch22) and not science as he implies. In this
regard I certainly
agree we need a level above that of the intellectual if we are not to be left
in despair, though
I am not sure how to define this - perhaps mystic is the best available term,
though I hope
not.
ROGER:
Pirsig agrees with your take on loneliness. In ZMM he references that it
doesn't come from technology it comes from Aristotle's subject/object logos.
I personally don't agree that the solution only lies in going beyond
intellect. Intellect is not synonymous with SOM. An MOQ-based metaphysics
rejects the fundamental separateness that leads to this loneliness.
Experience is not fundamentally lonely, it is our divisions and abstractions
of this experience that separate us from the world. The division is not
necessary.
JOHN:
Roger, I agree with your statement that "I see value in having the wisdom of
a sage and the
wonder of a new born child." However, I will take issue with a couple of
other points of yours.
When James calls pure experience 'stuff', I believe he has deliberately
chosen a very neutral
word. When Pirsig uses words like quality or value to describe that stuff,
his choice of words
is far from neutral. That is why it is fair enough to critique his key terms,
even if he tries to
embargo this (by asserting Quality cannot be defined).
ROGER:
Nothing can be fully defined. When Pirsig states that Quality is reality,
and that Quality cannot be defined I think that what he says is exactly
right. There is always a better description -- a higher quality description.
This is not to say that we shoudn't try to explain it better, we should, but
the only real way to experience reality is to experience it. Not to think
about it, but to experience it. Pirsig values the direct experience
foremost, the intellectual descriptions secondarily.
JOHN:
When you say my statement that "organisms encounter the world through
experiences of
positive and negative value, and what does not have value for them is not
experienced,
hence is not encountered", "is pure SOM", I can only say the perception is
yours. The words
'organism' and 'world' can of course be seen as objects or subjects, but that
is the nature of
nouns in language, as I explained in the introduction to my article. The key
words are
'encounter' and 'experience'; both, in my view, consistent with the MOQ.
ROGER:
This whole metaphysical model you are building is to use your words "from the
point of view of the organism." This is subjectivism. You are reverting
back to one of the horns of the dilemma that RMP rejected back in Montana.
JOHN:
The biggest problem for your position is that you say "The direct experience
is DQ", without
being able to clarify how anything else could exist. Is a memory experienced?
If not, how do
you explain it? If it is experienced, must it be only static? Some of my most
dynamic
experiences have occurred in dreams. Does that mean dreams are more real than
memories? I am not sure I have expressed myself well, here. Do you get my
drift?
ROGER:
William James explains this in detail in "Does Consciousness Exist?" And
Pirsig does the same briefly in ZMM in Chapter 20 p222 in the old Bantam
paperback. I have presented numerous inelegant attempts to do the same
within this forum, my favorite being the echo analogy. I can repeat it if
you are interested.
John, I strongly encourage you to read and reread and reread again chapter 20
in ZMM and chapter 29 in Lila. What Pirsig says here is so outside of our
SOM mythos that we tend to dismiss it. But without it, the rest of the MOQ
falls apart. This forces us to reinvent the MOQ into subjective "from this
point of view" metaphysics. The solution is not your Organismic MOQ, it is
to fully grasp that reality is not defined best as things, it is defined best
as events. These events are divided into the Direct preconceptual experience
-- pure value interaction -- and our conceptualization of of these events.
Dq and sq.
And to address your question, of course dreams are as real as memories.
Thinking and dreaming are both forms of experience. The 'organism' is an
abstraction, a pattern of conceptual similarities of experience that is
derived from these and other experiences.
Please help me find all the lower quality intellectual patterns from above,
and replace them with high quality!
Roger
PS -- I agree with all of Avid's comments on your post too, (except the 1st
which I don't even understand).
***********************************OLD POST**********************
<<
ROGER ZEROES IN ON SOME FUNDAMENTAL
MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MOQ WITHIN JOHN'S
ORGANISMIC METAPHYSICS
John,
I really did enjoy the work and quality of your recent forum contribution.
You clearly delineate the MOQ and your assumptions and critiques thereof and
you clearly offer some alternatives. Please allow me to state where I differ
in interpretation and prescription.
If anybody else wants to jump in, feel free to offer critiques of my
position. John will probably be gone for another few days.
JOHN:
"Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world" (Lila Ch 5) While
this seems to be essentially an assertion, the word empirical implies that it
is to be supported by my experience. Pirsig's example of the hot stove
demonstrates an organismic reaction to quality, in the case of this example a
low quality experience. What needs to be added to the core statement to
remove any possible ambiguity, then, is something of the nature of "Organisms
experience quality (both positive and negative) as the primary empirical
reality of their world." As an organism, I can then test this statement
against my experience, and hopefully this 'reality' would also be supported
by Poincare's small child. It seems to me that some form of statement of this
type is essential for the MOQ, yet by refining it as I have, it is saying
rather less than the original bold assertion. Yet critically, what it now is
saying is testable, whereas the more abstract statement from Pirsig is not.
ROGER:
Empiricism is basically a system of knowledge that stresses experience.
Quality is direct experience. Therefore "Quality is the primary empirical
reality of the world" is logically consistent within the metaphysics. To
quote W. James: "...there is only one primal stuff or material in our world,
a stuff which everything is composed , and if we call that stuff PURE
EXPERIENCE, then knowing can easily be explained ....."
Pirsig has chosen to call James' stuff VALUE or QUALITY. But they are
talking about the same stuff, and it is the primal or primary empirical
reality.
JOHN:
"Quality is morality" "They're identical" "The world is primarily a moral
order" (Lila Ch 7). The problem here is how to understand the terms morality
and value (another term Pirsig equates with Quality), especially as they are
applied to inorganic substance, or to artistic and intellectual judgements.
With reference to organisms, we could rephrase this to read something like
"Organisms experience quality as having either a positive or negative
valence, insofar as the experience alerts the organism to potential help or
harm in its environment."
To say bluntly that "Quality is morality" seems a nonsense to me, at least
in the generally understood meanings of these terms..
Pirsig is not unaware of this criticism. Indeed in Lila, Ch 12, he says "...
value. The word is too vague... Therefore to say that the world is nothing
but value is just confusing, not clarifying." He then goes on to sort values
according to the level of evolution they represent. "The value that holds a
glass of water together is an inorganic pattern of value..." and so on. In my
view he has not improved the situation. Just what an 'inorganic pattern of
value' might mean eludes me. Cut out the word value altogether in this
context and it reads better. The above could be rephrased as "What holds a
glass of water together is an inorganic pattern." It may be a bit trivial,
but adding in value doesn't improve that. The whole effort seems driven by a
desire to have 'value' as a universal term, while then admitting that the
values of each level "are completely different from each other."
ROGER:
What you see as a weakness, I see as brilliance. Pirsig builds a monism that
explains reality and knowledge from James' pure experience. When you say
"What holds a glass of water together is an inorganic pattern." You have left
out the key term. A rock and a glass are inorganic patterns composed out of
the relationship of value. These values are called the strong force, the
weak, electromagnetism and gravity. None of these have any meaning other
than as terms of relative value. Quantum reality is basically value
interaction.
JOHN:
He concludes this unsatisfactory explanation with the following important
statement "These patterns have nothing in common except the historic
evolutionary process that created all of them. But that process is a process
of value evolution. Therefore the name 'static pattern of values' aplies to
all. That's one puzzle cleared up." (Lila Ch 12)
Not so fast. While evolution is an important component of Pirsig's thought,
he has not justified the core statement that the evolutionary process "is a
process of value evolution". What he has done is examine the 'survival of the
fittest' strand in evolutionary thought and he makes quite a good case for
fitness being a 'value' term. But again, this works at the biological level
of the organism, or the species; possibly even at the cellular level. It
takes a giant leap of faith to apply this with any coherence to inorganic
patterns, and yet this is precisely what is required. What we have is a form
of words which papers over the huge gaps between patterns with nothing in
common by assuming a universal process of 'value evolution'.
ROGER:
I agree that inorganic patterns are not explained well by value evolution.
Value or pattern emergence perhaps, but not value evolution. Evolution can
occur though when chemicals form a feedback loop that allows the chemical
pattern to respond in such a way that its organization is conserved. Current
models of life are built on just such a spontaneous pattern of inorganic
pattern evolution. The universal process of value evolution works fine for me.
JOHN:
"A thing that has no value does not exist" or "The Value has created the
thing" (Lila Ch 8). This is an important insight, but difficult to test in
terms of experience as by definition what is without value will not be
experienced. Again there is a way of understanding such assertions from the
perspective of organisms, but by doing so the sweep of the original
statements is greatly reduced. The organismic statement would run somewhat as
follows "Organisms encounter the world through experiences of positive and
negative value, and what does not have value for them is not experienced,
hence is not encountered."
ROGER:
"A thing that has no value does not exist" is locally consistent within the
basic assumptions of empiricism. On the other hand, your "Organisms encounter
the world through experiences of positive and negative value, and what does
not have value for them is not experienced, hence is not encountered" is pure
SOM. It starts with an objective organism and (seems to me) then references
encounters with other objects. You have followed Robert's path and used
misunderstandings of the MOQ to recreate the world of Aristotle and Descartes.
JOHN:
When Pirsig says "a thing that has no value does not exist", he is
overstating his case.
ROGER:
Again, this is about as good of an assumption I can imagine. It is pure
empiricism. A lack of value means a lack of interaction and relation. And
reality is defined by interaction and relation.
JOHN:
At a fundamental level all language can be seen as carrying static value.
Most words only form from experiences of value. According to his logic, if
there was no value for me in a word, it would not become part of my
vocabulary. However some words seem clearly functional without value - the
word the will do as an example. The fills a grammatical role in language, but
as a word it is empty of content and equally empty of value.
ROGER:
You just agreed its value is grammatical. Why is content the only judge of
value? This is a very materialist argument.
JOHN:
You might argue it has a grammatical or syntactical value, but this is to
apply a different standard. The value Pirsig implies is the primary value
arising out of dynamic experience.
ROGER:
I do so argue! Grammar and language are shared systems of agreements to
coordinate our experiences. No word has inherent content other than what we
have arbitrarily agreed.
JOHN:
To now move in the reverse direction, is it not at least possible that there
may be some 'things' which we do experience as existing, but function like
the word 'the' as a component of our ordering of experience, without value?
If so, it seems a fundamental statement of Pirsig's metaphysics is flawed. To
me it seems the word "the" is itself sufficient refutation. It may well be
that a whole class of mathematical and logical terms, for example, are of
this type. Or can you explain for me how I might distinguish the values of
seventeen and eighteen respectively?
ROGER:
Seventeen only exists in relation to the other numbers that we have agreed
within our culture. In the same sense, physics has found that the basic
forces that compose 'matter' are similarly only interrelationships. What you
see as some kind of flaw is what I see as the strength of the MOQ.
JOHN:
So while most experience for most organisms includes positive or negative
value, and without this value nothing will be experienced, in human beings
with a capacity for language and logic there appear to be words and ideas
which are experiencable but function to facilitate other processes and are
themselves value free.
ROGER:
Huh? Their function shows their value. Pirsig never stated that only one
type of value pattern is real. They are all real.
JOHN:
"Dynamic quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality." "Static
quality ... always contains a component of memory." Pirsig saw this division
into dynamic and static as fundamental to his metaphysics, yet it lacks
clarity. In this polarity he seems to be addressing the question of how
dynamic experiences of quality are preserved or integrated into the ongoing
lives of organisms.
ROGER:
I agree with this last statement.
JOHN:
Both the wording above, with its references to 'pre-intellectual' and
'memory', and the examples used to flesh out this distinction (the tune on
the radio, the heart attack victim) are closely tied to higher organisms. To
explicate this, I would suggest something like "Organisms encounter dynamic
quality in direct experience, both positive and negative, and have the
ability to retain traces of this quality experience through memory, which is
static."
ROGER:
The direct experience is DQ. And the experience creates the organism and the
environment, not the other way around.
JOHN:
But as the example of the tune on the radio makes clear, there is in fact
no sharp division beween dynamic and static, but rather a continuum. The
dynamic element is still present to some extent even as the song is becoming
defined as 'good' in a static sense. It may still be possible to catch a
small element of the dynamic surprise after dozens of playings.
ROGER:
Again, DE is DQ. It is always dynamic. We have learned to filter and veil
experience. To pattern it and use this trick to run on autopilot. This is
basically a very effective and successful process. However, we can tend to
overdo it. We begin to live in our patterns and filter out the greater world
of experience.
The song has already been experienced, so we don't need or want to attend to
it any more. But as you mention, if you really listen, there is much dynamic
experience still to be discovered. Pirsig values sq, but always reminds us
to go back to the source and to constantly seek new, superior experiences and
patterns.
JOHN:
We have already found difficulty with the assumption that the the different
kinds of values associated with each level are part of some "process of value
evolution". However the question of the existence of the four systems or
levels remains an open one. The proposition is at least plausible, and it
seems to me that the test of experience does tend to confirm it. That is, I,
as an organism that functions within all four levels, frequently experience
conflicts which may be seen to arise from the mutual antagonisms of the
different systems, and these conflicts frequently appear intractable (there
appear to be no win/win solutions).
But even if this is so, it does not necessarily follow that the four systems
are rigidly hierarchic. Is it always the case that social values, for
example, over-ride biological values? Or is it rather that biological values
form part of the field in which social values arise, and the biological
values are encountered as constraints, limiting and shaping the options
available to the emerging social value system? In this more subtle statement,
there may be direct conflict between biological and social values, but there
is likely to be quite a bit of mutual adjustment as well. Indeed, this seems
likely, given that the complete overturn of biological values by the social
is likely to result in the elimination of the organism. Jonestown is an
example of such a situation, where the society became self destructive, but
obviously such social systems destroy their own bases for survival. So
although there may be some basis for asserting that since systems arising in
the higher levels manage lower level systems, they therefore dominate the
lower level systems, such domination need not be totally oppositional. Nor
will every emerging social value be equally above the lower level biological
values. It is to be expected that the lower level values will form an
important part of the environment which will select which higher level
emergents will survive. It may well be that the lower level values will at
times appropriately overturn some higher level emergents.
ROGER:
I tend to agree with most of your points on the moral hierarchy. The
hierarchy is an Aristotelian ordering system of value, but harmfull if taken
as literally as RMP suggests in places. I also strongly agree with your
stressing the harmony as well as the conflict between levels.
JOHN:
I have in another article ("Quality and Intelligence", available in the LS
Forum) argued that there are varieties of quality associated with the
biological, social and intellectual levels, and that the mystic puts his
trust in quality at the biological level. This is in organismic terms the
most immediate form of experience, unmediated by intelligence or social
factors, and linked very closely to survival. Recognition of the the quality
of a work of art, in contrast, is heavily dependant upon personal and
cultural training which can be extremely elitist, and generally has much less
survival value. It seems clear to me that Pirsig approaches this issue a
number of times but is so keen to maintain the elemental purity of Quality as
the basis of his metaphysics that he invariably turns off at a tangent and
evades the issue. It is one of the major flaws in his thought; and the purity
of the final metaphysics is phony because he has avoided the range of
meanings of quality that he has tried to subsume in an overly simple formula.
ROGER:
You confuse the pure DQ of an infant with the much broader range of
experience of a mystic. The difference is in depth and breadth of
conciousness.
But then again, I could be wrong.
>>
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