From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 19:16:35 BST
Hi Bo
Bo:
The point of this long introduction is that I am a tired of you
appearing
as if I don't understand, your "sermons" are wasted, I am completely
devoted to the MOQ, and to Pirsig for his pioneer job, but can't sweep
the inconsistencies under the rug.
Paul:
But Bo, as my wasted "sermons" are trying to demonstrate, I sincerely
think that the "inconsistencies" you have found are of your own
invention.
Also, with words like "sermon" you imply that I am some kind of Pirsig
fundamentalist, defending him for the sake of it, this isn't the case.
As you will see from my early posts, I came to this forum with a
wariness of metaphysics but with a genuine desire to understand Pirsig
and so questioned some of the areas I had problems with. My experience
of learning the MOQ is that it seems easy, obvious, at first, then
incredibly difficult, then simple again. After a lot of effort and
letting go of assumptions it is delivering on the clarity that I
demanded from it and to date you have given me no reason whatsoever to
change my mind on this.
So what I object to is not that you may think there are better ways of
using the "Quality Idea" to explain experience but that you use the
author's words to try and demonstrate that you have understood his ideas
better than him! See how this looks to me? You seem to invent
inconsistencies and "resolve" them by misreading his work to provide
"evidence" of your "solution". I've noticed something though; you move
the target all the time. You skip back and forth between the "solution"
and the "problem" blurring the case for each, and it seems to me that
the "solution" came first.
There are two things being discussed here, so let's try and do this
properly:
a) Define and demonstrate the problems existing in Pirsig's MOQ without
making reference to the interpretation required for your "solution"
then
b) Demonstrate that your "solution" solves the problems you have defined
and demonstrated
Bo:
I know only too well the argument that the DQ is beyond everything,
but it IS part of the MOQ in the same sense that God is part of
Christendom and Allah is of Islam. "Ecumenism" I can't discuss here,
but I see the SOL doing away with the container logic specter and
that is a relief. Momentarily at least because Steve pointed to the
difficulties a Q-level creates, but IMO also there the SOL
interpretation
saves the MOQ.
Paul:
It's funny this, your "metaphysics is reality" premise infers that a
metaphysics should not logically be placed outside of the reality
described by its own assumptions, but then to solve the "container
problem" you go ahead and try to do it [rebel patterns, new levels,
Quality Universes]. There is no need, whilst a substance based
metaphysics has the problem of denying itself a reality and an idealist
metaphysics is solipsistic, a static-Dynamic value based metaphysics
allows itself to be real [static quality] but doesn't claim to be the
whole of reality itself [static-Dynamic Quality]. So as demonstrated in
a previous post, the "container problem" is solved by showing that value
is not a subspecies of metaphysics but that metaphysics is a subspecies
of value.
Bo:
Look. In your view the MOQ is a high intellectual pattern, no?
Paul:
Yes.
Bo:
Now, a
development inside intellect is plainly impossible because it would
degrade the MOQ by pushing it down on the "idea" scale.
Paul:
Plainly impossible? If a better idea emerges, we could be talking about
where the MOQ fits into the framework of the better metaphysics, or we
could improve the MOQ to take into account the better idea. Either way,
immediate experience would remain unchanged, the metaphysical terms
describing experience may change and bring with them new analogues, new
perceptions and new understanding. There are countless world-views
co-existing as we speak, eastern philosophy is very different to western
philosophy, they deny elements of each other's reality. But as neither
philosophy nor metaphysics is the SOURCE of reality, the denials of
neither [static] philosophy have a direct bearing on the [dynamic]
reality which creates them both. Our familiar world emerges as a
relationship between static and Dynamic Quality. Remember this?:
"Why does everybody see Quality differently? This was the question he
had always had to answer speciously before. Now he said, "Quality is
shapeless, formless, indescribable. To see shapes and forms is to
intellectualize. Quality is independent of any such shapes and forms.
The names, the shapes and forms we give Quality depend only partly on
the Quality. They also depend partly on the a priori images we have
accumulated in our memory. We constantly seek to find, in the Quality
event, analogues to our previous experiences. If we didn't we'd be
unable to act. We build up our language in terms of these analogues. We
build up our whole culture in terms of these analogues." The reason
people see Quality differently, he said, is because they come to it with
different sets of analogues. He gave linguistic examples, showing that
to us the Hindi letters da, da, and dha all sound identical to us
because we don't have analogues to them to sensitize us to their
differences. Similarly, most Hindi-speaking people cannot distinguish
between da and the because they are not so sensitized. It is not
uncommon, he said, for Indian villagers to see ghosts. But they have a
terrible time seeing the law of gravity." [ZMM Ch.20]
And before you say "but this is not the full MOQ!", the continuity is
crystal clear...
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance left one enormous
metaphysical problem unanswered that became the central driving reason
for the expansion of the Metaphysics of Quality into a second book
called Lila. This problem
was: if Quality is a constant, why does it seem so variable? Why do
people have different opinions about it? The answer became: The quality
that was referred to in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be
subdivided into Dynamic Quality and static quality. Dynamic Quality is a
stream of quality events going on and on forever, always at the cutting
edge of the present. But in the wake of this cutting edge are static
patterns of value. These are memories, customs and patterns of nature.
The reason there is a difference between individual evaluations of
quality is that although Dynamic Quality is a constant, these static
patterns are different for everyone because each person has a different
static pattern of life history. Both the Dynamic Quality and the static
patterns influence his final judgment. That is why there is some
uniformity among individual value judgments but not complete
uniformity." [SODV p.12]
Again, I think you see all this as a problem because you do not
distinguish between metaphysics, which is static, and reality, which is
both static and Dynamic.
Bo:
Worse is a
development beyond intellect (still in you view) which would consider
the MOQ an "evil".
Paul:
As I keep saying, in terms of the nothingness of Nirvana and the
ineffability of the Tao, the MOQ is already "evil". It differentiates
the undifferentiated. But as Pirsig rightly points out, the only person
who doesn't do this hasn't been born yet. My newborn daughter is already
beginning to differentiate, but right now she is a wise old sage
compared to me :-)
Bo:
I have taken the consequences of this and closed intellect by making
it the S/O VALUE! and the MOQ the movement beyond. Admittedly,
this also closes the circle, but at a higher level (there can't be any
6th) but it solves the ills of the present intellect where the S/O
divide
alternates between being a bad idea and a great value (look to Scott's
work).
Paul:
To be honest, I'm a little confused by the discussion in the "S/O
divide" thread which is why I've kept out of it. I think the "S/O
divide" in the MOQ is the divide between (inorganic and biological)
static patterns of value experienced as physical sensation that we have
learned to measure and record with instruments that extend the range of
our senses and (social and
intellectual) static patterns of value experienced as compelling
impulses, behavioural influences, relationships, meanings, identity,
memories and symbols. Therefore trying to place the divide within one
level makes no sense to me, which doesn't make it wrong, it just doesn't
fit in with my understanding of the MOQ at all.
I think the S/O divide is one way of discussing static quality and is
the common sense way in which we learn to interpret experience which has
led to an understanding that has achieved countless great things in a
migration toward betterness and, as such, has value. However, when it is
taken as a hard-wired starting assumption on which to build a
metaphysical framework for science it misses out much of what is
immediately apprehended and leads to irreconcilable elements of
experience and ends up in all kinds of tangles. At a more tangible
level, it seems that somewhere along the way the achievements of this
dualistic thinking became a self-justifying end in themselves and were
no longer satisfied with gaining an advantage over nature but started
trying to replace it.
Cheers
Paul
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