ROGER STATES HIS POSITION ON THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN CONCEPTS AND REALITY AND
RECHALLENGES THE ANSWERS GIVEN BY
VARIOUS MEMBERS TO THE INFAMOUS
TWO QUESTIONS (NOTE IN THE PROCESS
HE DOES NOT CALL ANYONE A "SOLIPSISTIC SOM
OF A BITCH")
To Magnus, John, David T, Marco, Denis, Bodvar, Glenn, Peter, Todd and Horse:
We asked everybody to answer two questions last month. The answers revealed
a fundamental rift in understanding the MOQ. The questions were:
Q1)Are all patterns of value also intellectual patterns?
Q2) Were the 4 levels of the MOQ discovered or created?
Before answering directly, let me provide a background with references to how
the MOQ defines 'Reality' and 'Concepts of Reality.' I believe the
distinction is critical when answering these questions.
REALITY
The MOQ defines the 'essence' of reality (RMP's term) as Value, or Direct
Experience. The MOQ does not deny reality. I do not deny reality. I do not
deny Direct Experience or Value.
CONCEPTS VS REALITY
Pirsig clarifies the difference between these when discussing the
similarities between James' philosophy and his own. Approximately 8
paragraphs from the end of chapter 29, RMP 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. Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical:
it logically precedes this distinction."
Pirsig continues:
"....James had condensed this description to a single sentence: 'There must
always be a discrepency between concepts and reality, because the former are
static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here
James had chosen exactly the same words as Phaedrus had used for the basic
subdivision of the MOQ."
I believe the above two quotes clearly point out the answer to our two
riddles. They also indicate that the MOQ ascribes to a mystic metaphysics.
(Note the singular verb 'is' used for reality vs the plural 'are' for
concepts of reality.)
CONCEPTUAL PATTERN EMERGENCE
How do patterns of value emerge out of this flux of Direct Experience? The
answer is delineated in several different places in the works of James.
Within Lila, it is most clearly explained in Chapter 9, starting 14
paragraphs from the end. This is where RMP discusses the infant's
attentiveness to Direct Experience.
"...if he is normally attentive to DQ he will soon begin to notice
differences and then correlations between the differences and then repetitive
patterns of the correlations. But it is not until the baby is several months
old that he will begin to really understand enough about that enormously
complex correlation of sensations and boundaries and desires called an object
to be able to reach for one. This object will not be a primary experience.
It will be a complex pattern of static values derived from primary experience.
"Once the baby has made a complex pattern of values called an object and
found this pattern to work well he quickly develops a skill and speed at
jumping through the chain of deductions that produced it.... 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.
"In this way static patterns of value become the universe of distinguishable
things."
BACK TO THE QUESTIONS
Q1)Are all patterns of value also intellectual patterns?
Patterns are conceptual classifications of experience. The levels are
intellectual distinctions of direct experience. The levels and the DQ/sq
split are intellectual patterns derived from dynamic and flowing experience.
Q2) Were the 4 levels of the MOQ discovered or created?
The levels and DQ/sq were CREATED. They are intellectual divisions of the
dynamic and flowing undifferentiated flux of experience. The judge of these
intellectual classifications is Quality. We do not create the experience.
The experience creates us. We do however create the static conceptual
patterns of reality.
The answer to the above questions with the highest value within the MOQ is
that the levels are intellectual patterns and that they were created via the
aforementioned deductive process. Those answering the opposite position need
to directly rebut the above, or to at least give some substantiation of their
position. Magnus? Bodvar? John? David T? Glenn? Horse?
Be Good All,
Roger Parker
PS -- as an added bonus I have attached two quotes from RMP correspondence.
PIRSIG QUOTE #1
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".
Pirsig Quote #2
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.
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
