From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Wed May 25 2005 - 07:55:20 BST
Scott,
You said - if I may condense ..
"Pirsig's division into DQ and SQ is too simple ... [and is in error]
... because it privileges DQ over sq (explicitly)."
Agreed, but let's not throw baby (MoQ) out with the bathwater here.
D/S - Every binary-chop classification is an intellectual convenience
of some zillion shades of grey in complex reality. MoQ is not exempt.
DQ / SQ simply identifies an axis, a dimension, a degree of freedom,
an issue, our world view must recognise.
Q/q - There absolutely is no doubt Dynamics is lost without the static
latches - they depend on each other to be where they are. But, anyone
trying to be radical is going to tend to favour DQ - it's more
exciting, sexy, risky, etc. Anyone being passive and conservative,
would have little reason to have an opinion on the matter let alone
post one to a discussion board. We are a self-selecting bunch. Except
Platt that is, whose reason to contribute is to have fun taunting the
radicals :-) - but that makes him perversely Q IMHO. In other words,
Q/q is just human nature.
So rather than abandoning MoQ - just swap out Metaphysics for Model. A
good useful working model of the real world (including human nature,
by gad.) But nothing fundamantally metaphysical. There is no
metaphysics anyway - MoQ is simply the best of a misguided bunch.
Ian
On 5/24/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@localnet.com> wrote:
> Mike,
>
> First, a warning that I am more of a MOQ dissenter than a MOQist, so don't
> assume that what I say is an interpretation of Pirsig. It's more of a
> counter metaphysics.
>
> In my view, Pirsig's division into DQ and SQ is too simple, in part for the
> point you made in an earlier post that the dynamic is the permanent, and the
> static is the changing. I have frequently used the phrase "the logic of
> contradictory identity" (taken from Nishida) to deal with this: Your raising
> the issue of time is another case where the logic of contradictory identity
> (LCI) applies. We experience continuity because we change, and experience
> change because we are continuous. One has a situation where the LCI is
> required when you have two terms, which contradict each other, but at the
> same time constitute each other.
>
> The point of this is to keep the contradictory identity at the forefront,
> while metaphysical error occurs when one of the two terms is privileged over
> the other. The MOQ, in my view, falls into error because it privileges DQ
> over SQ (explicitly so, given that a true-blue MOQist will refer to them as
> DQ and sq, not DQ and SQ). Hence, I think you are wrong to say "because the
> interaction itself empirically precedes the static patterns". The empirical
> is the static pattern, which in being experienced is dynamic.
>
> My other main gripe against the MOQ is its devaluation of intellect with
> respect to DQ. In this, the MOQ continues the modernist error of thinking of
> intellect and language as a set of human add-ons to a universe that is
> fundamentally without them. Instead, I see Intellect as also being a
> dynamic/static contradictory identity, that is, as being at the same
> metaphysical level as Quality, and so if one wants to investigate how the
> dynamic and static interact, there is no better place for it than
> investigating one's own consciousness. But, according to the MOQ, this is an
> error, which says we should put our intellect to sleep in order to
> experience "pure experience". I consider "pure experience" to be a MOQ
> chimera.
>
> - Scott
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Hamilton
> To: moq_discuss@moq.org
> Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 4:05 AM
> Subject: Re: MD Time
>
> Hello again,
>
> Luckily I just stumbled across the relevant chapter of Lila's Child, so I'm
> now aware that I'm doing something "dangerous" by trying to tie DQ to an
> existing concept. I definitely need to clarify my suggestion.
>
> By "Time", I wasn't referring to the concepts we have of before and after,
> or the arbitary ways in which we divide time into minutes and seconds and so
> forth. If it's even possible, I was referring to time in a concept-free way,
> as the thoroughly empirical and undefined Big Long Now, equivalent to
> Pirsig's wordier description "the first slice of undifferentiated
> experience". I guess that Pirsig's description is much better, because
> "Time" has a monstrous amount of philosophical, conceptual and scientific
> baggage attached to it.
>
> However, I still think that the MOQ leads to all sorts of interesting
> thoughts about time, with the proviso that these thoughts always involve
> intellectual conceptualisations. Time is the constant interaction of static
> patterns, though calling it "interaction" is misleading, because the
> interaction itself empirically precedes the static patterns. The success of
> a static pattern in this constant interaction (time) determines its quality.
> And so on...
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>
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