From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jul 31 2004 - 22:52:29 BST
Horse, MM and all:
Horse asked:
I'm not sure why you seem to have such a problem understanding what Mark is
saying
re: Coherence. What is it that you find difficult to grasp about the concept
of Coherence
as suggested by Mark?
dmb replies:
Well, I've already made lots of specific objections and have been quite
explicit about what it is that doesn't make sense. For starters, Anthony's
text book puts the discussion of coherence right next to and in the context
of a psycholgist's disscussion of "flow". And yet MM insists that coherence
is NOT such a state of mind. This baffles me. Also Pirsig talks about those
Zen moments in terms of stillness, sleep and death while MM uses examples
involving lots of action and terms like tension and coherence. This cuts
against the grain, to say the least. Tension and sleep aren't exactly
opposite, but they're pretty incompatible. Death and coherence aren't
entirely antithetical, but are hardly interchangable. Stillness and action
cannot be equated except in the most paradoxical of assertions because they
are flat-out opposites. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I
say MM makes an artless and incoherent case. I can see that there are some
interesting borrowed ideas within his poorly delivered posts. Ant's book let
me know that. But to use MM's own "analogy", its like diamond dust in ...
(Dog poop? How much lower can we go here, eh? For the love of God, MM, will
you please quit with the childish insults and try to address the issues
instead?)
[Horse]
Are you saying that words can have only one meaning and if a word has
multiple
meanings it's rendered meaningless? I would have thought it perfectly
reasonable that a
word can have different meanings given different contexts. Coherence is one
such word
and can, quite reasonably, have different meanings pertaining to different
contexts. So
far from rendering it useless it makes it more flexible.
dmb says:
Who ever said words have only one meaning? I'm objecting to a multitude of
contradictory definitions. Flexibility is one thing, but can a single word
really be used to refer to opposite concepts without creating confusion? Of
course not. That's just bad writing, a bad choice of words. For example, if
coherence means both 'stillness' and 'activity', a person ought to be very,
VERY careful about how this is expressed and, again, the explanation should
include the word 'paradox' or maybe the phrase 'apparrent contradiction'. In
fact, MM has used the word so many different ways, that I only have the
VAGUEST idea of what he means by it. Since he is forever finding examples of
excellece to redescribe in terms of coherence, it sure seemed like coherence
refers to a certain kind of excellence, but this has been denied without
explanation too. This baffles me.
[David Buchanan]
Activity is coherence and coherence is stillness, so activity is stillness?
...I think the quote makes it pretty clear that Pirsig's idea about "the
ideal state of harmonious integration" is approximately the opposite of what
you've been saying. For you its about doing, for Zen and Pirsig its about
NOT doing.
[Horse]
Coherence can be both activity and stillness given different contexts. A
good example of
this comes from the martial art iaido.There is achieving coherence or the
right moment
in a waiting state (stillness) and achieving coherence in an active state
when the sword
is drawn, the strike is made and the sword replaced in the saya (scabbard).
So stillness is coherence and activity is coherence - both stillness and
activity can be
coherent, one leading to the other.
Where's the problem?
dmb says:
How do you figure "iaido" is a good example? Do we not explain things to
people in terms of what they already know? In any case, there is a long way
between saying that "stillness and activity can be coherent" and saying the
terms have interchangeable definitions. I had opposed one of MM descriptions
of achieveing a sq/sq tension (whatever THAT means) in action with a Pirsig
quote saying that Zen states are achieved in stillness. MM's incoherent
response did little more than assert that activity IS stillness. It looked
like an irrational attempt as face-saving to me and so I called him on it.
He seemed he was too busy protecting his ego that he forgot the importance
of logical consistency in our intellectual descriptions.
[Horse]
Mark appears to be saying that the interrelationof SQ (S/O) and DQ gives
instances of unity or coherence. That Mark prefers the term sq-sq tension
for DQ-SQ interrelation is neither here nor there. SQ-SQ tension is not the
same as S-O tension so you are again misinterpreting what Mark is saying.
dmb says:
This is a big part of what I don't get. MM calls it tension and Pirsig calls
it sleep. Unity is the absence of parts while coherence is an integration of
the parts and yet they are used interchangably. This confuses me. Or rather,
it is simply confusing and I've only pointed it out. I really don't know
which. Smart people seem to think there is somthing to it, but I still don't
see it. (I wish McWatt would answer my post to him.) In any case, I don't
understand why we should refer to the relationship between player, racket
and ball as a kind of tension or coherence. If there is tension, what is
doing the pulling? If there is coherence, what whole integrated system is
created? These ideas not only clash with Pirsig's terms, they clash with my
imagination and sense of things. As I understand it, the trick is to master
the static patterns in question to the point that they can be put to sleep,
as Pirsig puts it. They become so much a part of your nature that thoughts
or intentions about it are no longer required. AS it is experienced, this
feels like a letting go, a giving up, a kind of flight or flow, as the
psychologist put it. All these descriptive words are in the same ball park
and they all clash with the idea that this comes out of any kind of tension.
And its not that all the parts have come together so much as dissovled. See,
I like to tell myself a little joke; I like to say that a PEAK experience is
actually a PEEK experience. That is to say, it is one of those moments that
a person gets a glimpse of the unlying unity of dynamic reality. Its one of
those moments when we can peek behind the veil and see that reality is
undivided and there are no parts. This is why words like tension,
inter-relationship and coherence are such bad choices. Be a tense dead man?
It just doesn't work. Put them to sleep by way of inter-related coherence? A
dynamic spot? No. I'm sorry. Mark Maxwell might be trying to express great
ideas, but he's apparently unable to explain them to me.
[Horse]
Mark is trying to extend the scope and vocabulary of the MoQ and just
because you can't (or
won't?) see that that much of what he says makes a lot of sense this doesn't
lessen the
validty of what he's saying.
dmb says:
It doesn't? Maybe not, but it certainly lessens the accessability of what
he's saying. What I'm saying is that MM's descriptions do NOT extend the
vocabulary of the MOQ, it runs against the grain and uses contrary terms, as
I've already pointed out. Do you honestly think Pirsig's terms like
stillness, sleep and death are extended by terms like activity, tension and
coherence? I don't. In fact, this is a big part of my objection. Another
problem would be his constant hijacking of threads to discuss this pet idea,
which has absolutely nothing to do with anti-theism. Have you noticed this?
Those who get obsessed with pet ideas tend to re-direct the various
conversations so that their pet appears in nearly every thread, no matter
how irrelevant it is. Sigh. What can a guy do?
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