From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sat Sep 27 2003 - 20:14:44 BST
Scott/Platt
I think Scott's discomfort about MOQ can
perhaps be overcome if we start to see
Quality as a more inclusive concept, so inclusive in fact
that it becomes a non-concept as it has no other.
When we start to talk about SQ and DQ as capable
of explaining the whole cosmos we are handling two
very loaded concepts. What is DQ? I take it as being
related to the unstoppable flow of reality through
our experience. I take it as embodied in the fullness
of possibilty that is spread out ahead of the present
finite reality. What is SQ? It allows the cosmos
to be finite and actual, it is not a cosmos of unique
dissipating energy, transforming and transforming like
a firework. The cosmos leaves traces that fill up the present.
Patterns repeat. This is the very oddest of odds. DQ implies
freedom, it seems to imply creativity. SQ implies limitation,
it is a sacrifice of DQ, where SQ is DQ has withdrawn.
Sq says, something new -No, the same again. Why is this
happening. DQ is not limited. DQ can make the move
A or B or C or D. Does DQ choose? How does DQ choose?
Can DQ see the future? Does DQ consider the consequences
of its choices? Does it value A more or B or C or D?
What is without limit surely has choice? Or is it a cosmos of chaos?
The anthropic principle questions this. I think few of us would
consider design. But what of intelligence? What is intelligence?
Intelligence implies choice/timing/intervention. It also implies
knoweldge of SQ, it also implies that for DQ the future is perceived.
Perceiving the future means being able to look into the future, to be
able to say that there are many possible futures, that there is future
A or B or C or D, etc. Choice actualises one future and abandons
or sacrifices all the other possible futures. Choice moves through
all possible futures and this movement is what we call actual reality.
I suggest that Quality is SQ and DQ it is also intelligent and it also
demonstrates agency and this implies activity and values.
The sacrifice by Quality of DQ to SQ is what creates time and
finite existence. It is the sacrifice of DQ to SQ that causes the
forgetting of DQ, the hiding of DQ. We start to see everything
more and more in terms of SQ, hence we march our way to SOM.
We get hold of SQ, we become masters of SQ, we manipulate
and technologies SQ. We even think we can explain DQ in terms of
SQ. But originally, SQ and DQ are One. Subject and object are One.
As for human being, how clearly we take a ride with DQ, how clearly
we are da-sein, being-the-there, at this moment in time, in
this situation of static patterns, and how clearly we are pressing
on, pulled by the future, embodied by our projects, pulling the future
towards
us, one future pulled towards us, all the other possible futures sacrificed.
And where we are now, the present situation caused by all the possible
futures that have beedn sacrificed. Situation=limitation=the sacrifice of
in the past of the possible to create the finite/definite yet open present.
We are born in a present, in a situation now of our own chosing, but
DQ has already chosen for us. But DQ does not abandon us, she
picks us up at birth, she is full of possibilities for us. Perhaps
when we ask about all the SQ that already occupies our world
she whispers in our ear. As for intelligence, most of the cosmos
was achieved without human intelligence, perhaps the human component
of intelligence is not so large, what we like to call our intelligence is
not so uniquely ours, or perhaps we should associate what we are
less with the static patterns of our physical being? To be what we are,
is just to surf a certain flow of being around a moving point, in time
and space, a process of interplay between SQ and DQ, a certain
collapse of the wave function (i.e. many possibles becoming an
actual event) to produce the event of a human life within the event of
the cosmos.
regards
David Morey
----- Original Message -----
From: "Platt Holden" <pholden@sc.rr.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: MD The final solution or new frustration.
> Hi Scott,
>
> > In tracing the argumentation of the MOQ, I see the fundamental error to
> > be one that is shared with SOM, and that is nominalism.
>
> My dictionary defines nominalism as "a theory that there are no
> universal essences in reality and that the mind can frame no single
> concept or image corresponding to any universal or general term."
> My question: Is not Quality as Pirsig uses it a universal essence?
> Another question: Isn't it true that we can frame no single concept or
> image corresponding to Quality? If the answers are 'Yes,' then it seems
> the MOQ is non-nominalism.
>
> > With
> > original participation, the perceived object was experienced as a
> > representation of the spirit "behind" it. Note the word
> > "representation". This means that the things perceived were perceived as
> > representing something else.
>
> Does not the MOQ say that what we first experience, regardless
> of the object perceived, is value? I think of value as the spirit
> "behind" all perceptions of particulars. For me, that's non-nominalism.
>
> > With a little thought, we can recover that notion that the thing
> > perceived is a representation, in that we know through physics that what
> > is "really there" are a bunch of subatomic particles -- that a visual
> > object has been put together by our "organization". What we do, though,
> > is forget that fact when we talk about anything else, and hence we
> > assume that all that we experience -- or could experience (like the
> > subatomic particles) are just more things and events. Hence Kant. While
> > he recognized that we put together the perceived object, he could only
> > conceive that what might lie behind it (the thing-in-itself) was, well,
> > another thing.
>
> I think what Pirsig is saying that what lies behind the thing is not
> another "thing" in the sense that a thing occupies a particular place
> and time in space, but rather Quality or value which is the
> "conceptually unknown," beyond time and space.
>
> > Pirsig uses it in the nominalist way, as in:
> >
> > "For purposes of MOQ precision, let's say that the intellectual
> > level is the same as mind. It is the collection and manipulation of
> > symbols, created in the brain, that stand for patterns of experience."
>
> > Here a word (or more generally, symbol) stands for patterns of
> > experience. While superficially true, this hides something, namely that
> > "patterns of experience" is not experience. Experience is always
> > experience of particulars, but a pattern of experience is a concept.
>
> In the MOQ, experience is never experience of particulars, but pure
> value. Value itself is experience. It is an essence. Thoughts, the
> particulars and the patterning, come after the value.
>
> > For
> > the non-nominalist, a particular, like a word, stands for the concept.
> > Without the concept there can be no particular, for without a concept (a
> > system, a pattern, a language in a more general sense than English) the
> > particular cannot be picked out of chaos.
>
> In the MOQ, particulars are picked out of Quality and become static
> patterns of value. (Quality is not "chaos.").
>
> > The nominalist, especially after the nineteenth century, would have us
> > believe that concepts got tacked on to a world of particulars, a world
> > that had no concepts, for the simple reason that there is physical
> > evidence of a world without humans prior to a world with humans, and
> > that concepts happen in human brains. If this were the case, then we
> > also should not talk of patterns of experience before there were
> > physical humans. The non-nominalist view is that what we call laws of
> > nature, and instinct, are concepts, not just in our thinking about them,
> > but as they are actually lived by inorganic and biological beings.
> > Concepts, then, existed before humans walked in the world, and human
> > learning is the recovery of those concepts.
>
> Pirsig would agree. The role of DQ in evolution, long before humans
> walked the planet, is clearly spelled out in LILA. We are learning,
> through Pirsig, to recover the concept of Quality.
>
> > Well, arguments can go on and on, so let me stop here and just summarize
> > a non-nominalist metaphysics as it compares to the MOQ. In brief,
> > instead of placing Quality as the first principle, I would place
> > Intellect there instead.
>
> "Quality" is an intellectual symbol for an essence that cannot be
> intellectually described. To disallow using words to describe the
> ineffable would result in not permitting any thought or talk about God.
> "The Tao that can be described is not the Tao."
>
> > To be a pattern, there has to be a change, or a
> > differentiation (feel pain...jump off stove), and in combining these
> > pieces into an entity, one has a concept. Also, to be static, it is
> > repeatable, and that too is a property of concepts, and not of
> > particulars. Hence all SP are concepts, and hence what the MOQ calls the
> > intellectual level is actually all levels.
>
> To be a pattern there has to be value first, then afterwards come the
> concepts. I think you're putting the cart before the horse. And yes,
> all static patterns are concepts, but it doesn't follow that the
> intellectual is all levels. The Bible is a static pattern of concepts,
> but that doesn't mean it's all intellectual. Symbols--the content of
> the intellectual level--point to experienced value and patterns of
> values but are not those values themselves. You can't satisfy your
> hunger with a menu.
>
> > Because we have to revise these as
> > new particulars come into view, we assume that we are trying to
> > correspond to some independently existing reality. But this is also a
> > nominalist assumption.
>
> Then Pirsig is a non-nominalist. He doesn't assume an independently
> existing reality although for some purposes he sees it has high quality
> intellectual value.
>
> > Like Pirsig said
> > about SOM, I see the nominalist barrier to be a "cultural immune
> > system", even stronger than that of SOM, since it caught Pirsig as well.
>
> I think I've presented sufficient evidence to show that nomialism did
> NOT catch Pirsig as you suggest.
>
> > Note to Platt:
> >
> > First, I agree about the existence of wordless thinking. However, I see
> > that as something that fits into a non-nominalist metaphysics much
> > better than the MOQ. It is where one sees concepts being born in human
> > intellect (whether they are completely new, or just being discovered, I
> > won't get into). It is pure thinking, or on its way there, a concept
> > central to Steiner and Kuhlewind.
>
> I think wordless thinking--or shall we say "intuition" -- fits very
> well into the MOQ. We might say that wordless thinking gets you off a
> hot stove before word-thinking comes into play..
>
> > On Pirsig's objections to SOLAQI, that there are non-S/O examples of
> > intellect, I responded to that at length to DMB a week or so ago. In
> > brief, the objections are valid if one adopts Pirsig's restriction of
> > "object" to the inorganic and biological levels, but I consider that
> > restriction to do more harm than good. Rather, I would say that Bo is
> > correct to see the value in thinking to lie in the distinction between
> > subjective and objective. Further, though it starts with objective as
> > the sensorily perceived, one of the advances thinking makes is to learn
> > to treat social and intellectual SQ (to revert to MOQ) as objects as
> > well.
>
> We can treat non-nominalist essentialist concepts as objects just as
> well as we can social and intellectual patterns. It depends on one's
> view point, doesn't it? I can view my thoughts as objects while you can
> view my thoughts as the subjective wanderings of a madman. In the
> postmodernist Rorty/Fish view, all truth is subjective, ie. that which
> one can get away with -- except their own truth, of course, which is
> solidly, historically objective.
>
> Platt
>
> "To feel beauty is a better thing that to understand how we come to
> feel it." --Santayana
>
>
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