Dave Thomas (dlt44@ipa.net)
Thu, 4 Dec 1997 17:03:13 +0100
Hugo
> “ All life is a migration of static patterns of quality toward Dynamic
> Quality” Lila pp 139.
>
> I would put it the other way around, or, I think this misses the
> complementary part of dynamic quality getting actualized in form of static
> structures. I take Dynamic Quality to be both 'source' and 'freedom';
> historically Dynamic Quality was the source of every static structure
> around, and dynamically (NOW) Dynamic Quality is the freedom, the
> indeterministic aspect of our world. Pirsig put Dynamic Quality both above
> and beneath the levels of static patterns, so I gather my view is no
> different from his, this sentence just highlights one aspect. Just a thought.
I agree, but IMO and in the context I'm using it in my essay is that this
"migration toward Dynamic Quality" is underlying factor that gives rise the
moral order of the system. Or the factor by which morality is judged. If an
action by a particular system is true in relation to this statement it is a
high quality event.
> "So I will make this assertion about those elements of reality we call now
> call “objects” in MoQ all will have aspects of their total reality that
> lies in each of the four static levels."
> >>
> >Is the last line true?
>
> I can see your point that 'objects', being intellectual constructs, will be
> part of the intellectual level, and - us being inherently biological and
> social too - they "have aspects of their total reality that lies in each of
> the four static levels". But this does not mean that there is, or was,
> nothing just inorganic, something non-intellectual, before we formed our
> view of the world. I would say that we cannot do without this naturalistic
> or realistic or evolutionary view of the world. But your idea goes straight
> to the heart of the idealistic worldview
I reread Pirsig Brussels paper and may have some more insight into this. In
discussing the relationship between Bohr's philosophy and MoQ. He developed
some diagrams of Bohr's system which places reality as a construct which was
first developed in the mind of observer A and then unambiguously communicated
to observer B. When observer B, or many observers B concurr with the
observation you have a static pattern for that particular reality. He seems to
agree with this but takes exception with Bohr in that, from what I can tell
from this brief overview, Bohr failed to clearly state that the input to his
experiment was real also. Pirsig goes on to relate this real input to the
experiment as Dynamic Quality. I take this, combined with other things Pirsig
has said, to mean that he agrees with the Materialists insomuch as there is a
large group of stuff which is external to the mind which has reality whether
the mind is present or not. And then goes on and agrees with the Idealists
that man's reality is a construct of the mind which is unique to the
individual but that we can and do come to agreement as a society about a group
of static patterns,which are mental, that we call reality. So in one sense
Mind/Body split has some validity in that we have both a mental construct of
reality in the mind and we have a physical reality of the body.But since we
can't clearly say where one starts and the other leaves off we would should
treat them as one.
Dave
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