Rog Replies To Glenn and Platt (though it seems to apply to the recent
Elephant Marco discussion too)
GLENN:
Finally, there's this business about DQ creating substance during
quality experiences. There's no empirical evidence for this, and it
contradicts science because a rock that you create and which you
claim to be several minutes old can be carbon-dated and shown to be
several million years old. Also, this idea of humans creating
substances like rocks on-the-fly contradicts another part of MOQ, which
states that the inorganic level evolved and pre-dated humans. In this
case either evolution is wrong or the creative power of DQ is not true.
You didn't respond to this. When I brought this up in a post last July in a
rebuttal to Pirsig's resolution of the mind-matter problem, I recall you
saying Roger had an answer for this, but you couldn't remember it.
Roger didn't respond then but perhaps he didn't read our thread.
Would he care to now?
ROG:
All of your questions are answered in Anthony McWatt's summary of the MOQ. I
find it corresponds somewhat with what Elephant has been saying lately as
well. Below is Ant's intro:
************************************************
Introduction to Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality"
The "Metaphysics of Quality" (MOQ) was a programme introduced by Robert
Pirsig in his 1991 novel "Lila". "Quality" as referred to, by Pirsig, is
"immediate, undivided, experience" . That is to say immediate experience
before any division consciousness may make between internal or external
states. This is similar to the Cittamatra tradition in Buddhism which asserts
that entities exist within the flow of perceptions but not as independent
external objects .
Consequently, the MOQ shares the fundamental teaching of Buddhism in that an
incorrect view of reality is to see a distinct and persistent mind and body
supporting consciousness where a subject is discerned, along with its objects
. And that a correct view of reality is...
"to see no persistent mind or body - no subject - since there are no distinct
and persistent mind objects available to perception."
To which Guenther adds:
"Since no experience occurs more than once and all repeated experiences
actually are only analogous occurrences, it follows that a thing or material
substance can only be said to be a series of events interpreted as a thing,
having no more substantiality than any other series of events we may
arbitrarily single out. Thus the distinction between "mental" and "material"
becomes irrelevant and it is a matter of taste to speak of physical objects."
Therefore, for Pirsig, immediate experience (or Quality) is experience where
there is no distinction between what is experienced and the act of
experiencing itself. Quality is the changing flux of reality that logically
comes before any conceptual distinctions such as subjects and objects are
made. The concepts of subject and object are commonly confused with the
essence of reality because they have become such a common apparatus for
describing, understanding and analysing that reality .
This is not to say conceptualisation in itself is a problem (for the MOQ is a
set of concepts) but the confusion of concepts for reality itself is. This is
probably the most difficult part of Pirsig's philosophy to understand and is
termed by Buddhists as "right wisdom" .
Moreover, following the thinking of Alfred North Whitehead, "immediate,
undivided, experience" is interpreted as an event by Pirsig. He phrases it
thus:
"Quality is not a thing. It is an event. It is the event at which the subject
becomes aware of the object... The Quality event is the cause of the subjects
and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the
Quality!"
In this quote, Pirsig is implying that an analysis of the world in terms of
subjects and objects is a product of one particular worldview in which the
recognition of the "event" co-exists and is dependent upon the recognition of
an "object" acting on a "subject".
Pirsig opposes this view and, moreover, believes that subjects, objects, and
events are only concepts applied to reality (and, as for any concepts, maps
of reality, not reality itself) .
Another metaphysical error, according to Pirsig, is to take the notion of
"event" and consider it dependent upon those of subject and object. A more
faithful rendering is given by reversing the relationship, so understanding
how subject and object are themselves indefinite and are devoid of continuity
. It is illogical to put them otherwise as Bertrand Russell states:
The stuff of which the world of our pure experience is composed is, in my
belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either .
Moreover, even in the MOQ, events are merely analytical tools - ways of
dividing the world into units ready for further processing. This is the
preference of Pirsig on empirical grounds. We experience the world as a
stream of events, from which inferences are made about subjects and objects,
which then serve to inform our view of the world.
Both subjects and objects, therefore, are perceived by Pirsig as
generalisations from experience. Metaphysical systems which employ these
concepts (explicitly or implicitly) are referred to by him as subject-object
metaphysics (SOM) . SOM usually refers to any metaphysical system that
follows the distinction epitomised (though probably first recognized by the
Ancient Greeks) by Descartes in what is called the Mind-Body distinction.
This involves the division of a sentient being (such as a human being) into a
Body (which is spatially extended) and a Mind (which is not).
According to Pirsig, the stream of experience is "Quality", so by inference,
Quality is the fundamental building block of the world. As immediate
experience (or Quality) is in a continual changing flux, it would appear
impossible to produce an exact definition of Quality. This is partly because
by the time any complete definition would be stated (and it would have to
take some time!) immediate experience would have subsequently changed so
resulting in a consequent inaccuracy of such a definition.
Pirsig also equates Quality with the Good. Therefore, he considers moral
qualities to be as readily perceivable as any other. Hence, one of the
defining characteristics of his work (as he draws attention to in "Lila") is
that rather than dislocating morals from other fundamental studies, morals
are just as readily derivable from our immediate experience as the natural
sciences. The whole universe is perceived as being subject to a moral order.
Pirsig considers that (what he terms) the scientific interpretation of
reality is a generalisation derived from immediate experience.
"The MOQ is truly empirical. Science is not. Classical science starts with a
concept of the objective world - atoms and molecules - as the ultimate
reality. This concept is certainly supported by empirical observation but it
is not the empirical observation itself."
The scientific view that is based on an objective world "out there" relies
upon postulates that cannot be directly experienced and are, as such, less
empirically pure than (and logically a posteriori) to the MOQ which starts at
unmediated experience .
Though there are no objects or subjects as traditionally thought of within
the MOQ, for pragmatic reasons (i.e. it makes human existence much easier by
employing concepts) Pirsig terms the continually changing flux of immediate
reality "Dynamic Quality" while any concept abstracted from this flux is
termed a pattern of "static quality" . It is important to keep in mind that
"Dynamic Quality" is not a concept but only a referring term for immediate
experience i.e.
"The purpose of the description of 'Dynamic Quality' as 'the continually
changing flux of immediate reality' is to block the notion that Dynamic
Quality is some kind of object. To try to take that definition as some kind
of philosophic object itself is to pervert the purpose for which the
statement was intended."
Dynamic Quality is useful as a term as it allows reference to "conceptual
unknowns" (as implied by the physicist Niels Bohr) i.e. quantities that are
ineffable whether, for example, in the context of mystical and aesthetic
experiences or in the context of wave-particles in quantum mechanics . By
"static quality" Pirsig isn't referring to anything that lacks movement in
the Newtonian sense of the word but to any repeated arrangement whether it is
"inorganic" (e.g. chemicals, quantum forces), "organic" (e.g. plants,
animals), "social" (e.g. cities, ant nests) or "intellectual" (e.g. thoughts,
ideas). Static quality is any pattern that appears long enough to be noticed
within the flux of immediate experience (i.e. within Dynamic Quality) . As
Pirsig's theory is pan-experiential, the experience referred to by "immediate
experience" applies to any entity (be it a sub-atomic particle, plant, worm,
human being etc.) that is derived from immediate experience.
********************************
He goes on to take on the issue of time and evolution later in the essay.
Below is the link.
http://www.quantonics.com/Anthony_McWatts_MoQ_Paper.html
Let me know if you have any questions or disagreements with Ant or of Pirsig.
Rog
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