All
The problems to be investigated this month are:
QUALITY, DYNAMIC QUALITY AND STATIC QUALITY
2.1 Pirsig doesn't adequately distinguish between Quality and Dynamic
Quality
3.1 The various descriptions, definitions and examples of Dynamic and
static quality aren't consistent with each other.
**********
If we start with a basic premise that underlies the bulk of
Western Philosophy from early Greece to present day:
"Aristotle once remarked that the central concern of previous
philosophers, when they asked questions about what 'being' is, was
really, at bottom, a question about what substance is. (The term we
translate 'substance' is ousia, a verbal noun formed from the participle
of the verb 'to be') 'For this is' he continues, 'that some claim to be
one in number, some more that one, and some limited, others unlimited'
He devotes himself to the task of finding an adequate account of
'substance' and on defending the priority of substance to other items
such as qualities and materials." (Blackwells-A Companion to Metaphysics-p25)
Pirsig rejects this priority saying, not 'substance', but, "Quality is the
primary empirical reality of the world" Lila-pp 67
Views similar to this predate Aristotle and have had continued support down
though the ages by various Western philosophers. Most trace the source
to the PreSocratics, most notably Heraclitus (c535-c475 BC), then much later,
Leibniz, Bergson, Peirce, James , Whitehead, the recently expired
Charlie Hartshorne. It continues with people as diverse as Pirsig, Ken
Wilber, Huston Smith, Charles Jencks and others in similar veins called
"process philosophy","evolutionary philosophy","systems philosophy", and
the "conscience evolution" movement.
The historic metaphysical root is:
"Heraclitus rejected [other Greeks arguing that becoming presuposes
being] maintaining that becoming is all predominant and exhaustive: only
becoming occurs and nothing is (has being) but everything is perpetually
becoming." (Blackwells-A Companion to Metaphysics-p 46)
Hence Heraclitus's claim that 'All is flux'. In my opinion the problems
people have distinguishing between Q and DQ stem from this 'becoming' or
evolving nature of reality.
Under the MoQ, Quality (with a big 'Q') is the inclusive or universal
term for the whole of reality. "Every" and "All" values or qualities
that exist form the
whole of reality. But if an evolutionary cosmology, in some form, is
accepted; Quality is continuously 'becoming', being built up, or
reorganizing, or expanding,
or changing, dynamically. The MoQ posits that the'experience' of this
(DQ), in some form or other, is an intergal part of the whole process
from quarks on. At some point in this evolving process, maybe even from
the start, some parts started to become 'aware' or 'conscience' of
experience and then 'aware' they were
'aware', then named those 'awarenesses' (SQ). Now recent experiments in
physics, such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment, seem to
strongly suggest that this 'knowing' or cognition of experience is NOT a
passive act even at the subatomic level. That somehow 'knowing' and
'becoming' are integrally tied together. And, possibly have been from
the beginning or at least for a very long period of time.
"The theoretical consequences of this finding are revolutionary-
sufficiently so for Henry Stapp of the University of California at
Berkley, to call it, "THE most important finding in science ever" it
relegates space, time, and matter (the matrices of the world we normally
know) to provisional status.".... " Everything we [now] know about
Nature is in accord with the idea that the fundamental process of Nature
lies outside space-time, but generates events that can be located in
space-time" ... Strapp's close associate, Geoffrey Chew..said.. " If you
begin with matter as a given, you're lost" (Why Religion Matters- Huston
Smith p176)
Now, if you start with Aristotle's 'substance' "you're lost" and the
role of philosophy in general, and metaphysics in particular, to provide
a foundation for a growing, changing, ' becoming' reality; it would
only seem natural that a useful philosophy would have to be provisional,
growing, changing, and 'becoming' along with reality. So sometime
between 1974 and 1991 the minor key continuum that started in
Presocractic times (in the West and in the East probably before that)
evolved or emerged using the terms Quality, Dynamic Quality,Static
Quality and the Metaphysics of Quality in an attempt to better order and
understand this 'becoming' and evolving reality.
If the whole of reality [Quality] is always 'perpetually becoming' always
dynamically (little 'd') changing and evolving, then all reality is dynamic.
Dynamic Quality (big 'D') is the term Pirsig uses for direct experience,
moment to moment, of values or qualities that individual and
interrelated parts of reality have. So both all of reality [Quality] and
experience of reality [Dynamic
Quality] are dynamic,continously changing, always becoming, always new,
moment by moment.
But how is it that our day to day perception of reality sure doesn't
seem this way? Cognition of experience percieves that values or qualities
form stable patterns some of which happen very quickly and some which
can persist for relatively long periods of time. But because the rates
and types of change vary greatly, senses have finite natural limitations,
and understanding of perceptions are also limited by many factors, these
patterns for all practical purposes can sometimes seem fixed or eternal
or sometimes continuously changing. Though these "patterns" exist or
continously 'become' the is 'fixedness' is an illusion, though often a
very useful one. For man, if values perist long enough for a pattern to
be discerned, we name that pattern for convenience sake. These 'named'
patterns of value Pirsig calls Static Quality.
3WD
------- End of forwarded message -------
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