Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Mon, 19 Jan 1998 19:41:20 +0100
Hi Hugo and squad
Hugo Fjelsted Alroe wrote:
> I am thinking in terms of possible and actual being, as an old
> philosophical counterpart of the dynamic and static quality of Pirsig. I
> wrote a couple of mails to the list on 29.oct.97 where I tried to explain
> my view on this. Let me have another try.
> First, I equate dynamic quality with the possible and not yet actualized,
> and static quality with the actualized. I will give a simple dice example
> first.
<<snipped "simple dice example">>
This sounds very much like quantum mechanics' "world of possibilities"
(or whatever they call it), where things neither exist nor don't exist
but are just "possiblities".
It's very tempting to latch onto an explanation like this because we can
back it up very neatly with physics. But from my reading of Lila that
isn't exactly what Pirsig means. Dynamic Quality is something that we
*can* experience. At the end of chp 11 he describes it as "pure fun".
It's what babies experience and mystics and what American Indians try to
hold onto. It's not something that's totally beyond experience which is
what your dice example seems to suggest. If it was never actualized then
it we would never experience it, but we do. Pirsig calls it the "cutting
edge" and the "front edge" of experience. I don't recall that he
actually says it's "beyond" experience.
Sorry if that doesn't exactly answer your question, but I thought I
would just say it anyway;-)
> Doug, on my comments to principle # 11, you said:
> >Hugo,
> >
> >One of the great strokes of genius from Kurt Goedel in the 1920s and
> >1930s was his use of self-reference (recursion) to achieve his
> >"Incompleteness Theorems."
> >
> >I like Platt's "Proof" principle for exactly this reason.
> >
> >Platt shows perspective at an extraordinary, high, Quality level in this
> >statement. It is simple, elegant, and after Platt opened our eyes with
> >it, it as do all great breakthroughs, became intuitive.
>
> And Platt gave a long and thorough reply to me (thanks Platt) which I have
> not yet fully understood, but which made me see, that it is not the
> principle itself: "It is impossible to refute that Quality is reality
> without asserting a value", which I dislike, but the fact that the
> principle is called "Proof".
What would you prefer to call it then?
but saying that it can be proven to be
> better is the same as saying that it is only part of some larger system, -
> and then we need a proof for that system. Or?
The MoQ proves it is better than the current subject-object metaphysics
by using the same measure that the current metaphysics uses to justify
itself, ie Logic. Consequently anyone who believes in the SOM will have
to accept the MoQ because it is better than the SOM according to the
rules set down by the SOM itself. To put it another way, we beat them at
their own game. It's pretty clever but outside of the SOM it's not
relevant.
Diana
ps I was about to send this when Platt's comments came in. I agree that
the proof principle is rationale that supports the MoQ, but it isn't
actually the MoQ itself. Let's bin it.
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