LS Re: Principles - Update


Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 05:08:24 +0100


Diana and squad

Hugo:
>> No, I am fully aware that a die example can only capture some smal part of
>> what quality is about, and I have no quarrel with the term 'cutting edge'.
>> I completely agree that we are living in the big NOW, that the world IS
>> now, and that all our intellectual efforts are striving to move beyond this
>> now, - forgetting for now the fact that even intellectual efforts ARE now.
>> Hence I would not agree with the way you put it, that we are experiencing
>> something (dynamic quality) which is not actualized; the point is that
>> experiencing IS actualization, and that we cannot beforehand see exactly
>> what is to happen.

Diana:
>Well perhaps that is where we differ, because I don't agree that we are
>living in the big NOW. The whole idea of "now" implies that everything
>takes place within "time". This is completely alien to my idea of
>Dynamic Quality. Time is a static pattern, so it follows that "now" is a
>static pattern. In Dynamic Quality there is no "now" nor any past nor
>future, everything just is. If there is no such thing as time in Dynamic
>Quality then it doesn't make any sense to talk of "beforehand"

I think there may be some failure of communication behind this disagreance.
I thought the use of NOW was a common LS language, and this was obviously
wrong. Let me try to rephrase my view, and lets see if the disagreance
persists.
Now is not a static pattern, now is the very being, the 'is' in 'everything
just is'. But I do not agree that 'everything just is' and that we
therefore cannot talk of past and future, of before and after. In any truly
deterministic view before and after are reversible, this can be found in
the work of Huw Price for instance, and in an einsteinian block universe
future and past are real in some determined sense. I do not adhere to any
such view, in my view there is only really a NOW, and what we can say of
the future and the past are inferences that rely on the more-or-less
stability of reality. It does make sense to talk of before and after, and
of future and past, in my view; as long as we do not presume the equal
reality of past, NOW and future. Before and after are necessary terms for
any evolutionary view, they are part of an 'evolutionary logic', of the
kind of logic which is suitable in an evolutionary world. Time is not in
any way a superfluous concept, it is just not a dimension of reality in the
way it is most commonly taken to be. The difference between conceiving time
as a dimension and as a measure of change, is for instance that motion does
not happen 'in' time, motion *is* in space (leaving the meaning of space
for later) and stabilities *last* or endure; and the lasting (or dure'e,
from Bergson) and the relative motion is primary to time, they are
prerequisites for the concept of time, not the other way around. Time is a
measure based on some stable dynamics, it is a measure of one dynamic with
another, and 'the irreversibility of time' reduces to the basic concepts of
evolution.

But it is foolish to try discuss time in a few sentences, and I will wait
and see if there is any real disagreance left.

Diana:
>As for "experiencing something which is not actualized", all I said was
>that we can and do experience Dynamic Quality. If experience is
>actualization then Dynamic Quality is actualized.
>

Again, I think there is no real disagreance. Lets settle for the
description of dynamic quality as the cutting edge of experience. To me
this implies some connection with potentiality and the 'collaps' of a range
of potentiality to some actuality, closely related to the discussion of
time above, but I will not force others into this language - we can stick
to Pirsigs terms, and there I see no disagreance.

Regards

Hugo

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