Martin Striz (striz1@MARSHALL.EDU)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 05:13:29 +0100
clark wrote:
> Martin,
> Thanks for your attempt to clear up my muddled thinking. You gave the
> clearest exposition of the MOQ that I have seen in one essay.
Well, I've struggled with it myself. Mark and Bo helped me out a lot, along
with several philosophies outside of the MOQ (phenomenology, field-being,
empiricism, etc.). We all know that Pirsig's books are jig-saw puzzles. You
go along and find a few pieces and put them together, but then you get some
pieces that belong somewhere completely different, and later you get another
piece that fits with your first set, and so on. I'm not proposing that what I
said was absolutely "right," but by putting together the pieces, it is the best
way I have been able to understand Quality, in so far as it can be understood.
As Diana pointed out, time is a static pattern (if it is the fourth dimension,
then it is a physical static pattern like the other dimensions and matter and
energy). However, when I say Now I mean an infitesimally small amount of time,
which is to say No Time at all: just a point. It's just the moment of
awareness, a continually evolving event that gives us our sense of time, space,
and all the other values and value-judgements we make.
I won't profess to be completely right since everyone will have a slightly
different interpretation of Pirsig's work (I mean it's not exactly a pure
syllogism). So let this be a warning to you Lila Squad: don't let the
differences stop us!
> The picture you have now completed for me is that individually we are
> living in a constantly changing cloud of virtual awareness which results in
> a constantly ongoing sense of reality as determined by the instantaneous
> contents of our static patterns of value. There is no reality that we can
> grab onto and say this is it. We can, of course, grab an instant and try
> to describe reality but it will be a reality that is no longer valid. I can
> also see why one could say that humanity is one state of being because we
> are linked to the same underlying process, and thus dip into the same pool
> of awareness.
I don't know what you mean by "virtual" awareness. What you are saying sounds
a lot like Kant. He said that our knowledge is a continuous synthesis of sense
experience and a priori knowledge/memory. It may be true, but don't fall back
into Kant's SOM thinking. Pirsig knew he couldn't defeat Kant, he just said
that "we must thank Kant for leading a certain line of thought to its necessary
conclusion," but we're past due for a big paradigm shift. As long as we
maintiain that our knowledge is a synthesis of static and dynamic values, and
not a synthesis of object experience and subject memory, we'll remain within
the MOQ.
> I would have to take issue with the Field Being idea when it states that
> there are no independent continuous beings. It is true that there are no
> material beings that persist through time, but there are beings whose ideas
> persist through time and those ideas contribute to the ongoing sense of
> reality for some of us. In fact, I think that this is probably universally
> true regardless of the quality of those ideas. We all influence and are
> influenced by some people whether their ideas are good or bad. Back in the
> forties or fifties a group of people were discovered in New Guinea who had
> no contact with any other people of any kind within their memory. Their MOQ
> must have operated the same as ours.
You made a good objection to field-being. I also pionted out to my friend that
field-being comes into contradiction with phenomenology, which says that there
is an underlying "essence" that doesn't change over time, and there are methods
(called Eiditic and Phenomenological Reductions) to discovering it. He just
responded, "Yeah, but phenomenology is old and stale. Field-being hasn't been
pioneered yet." And when you're going to become a professional philosopher,
it's good to espouse new beliefs. Hey, the MOQ is pretty new!! :-)
> This brings me to another problem I have with the MOQ. We, and most
> everybody in the LS discusses the MOQ solely in relation to the Human race.
> In this context all of this makes sense. It makes sense until we begin to
> talk about the operation of DQ before sentience. The SPOVs start with the
> inorganic level. This implies that the MOQ existed before sentience. Pirsig
> himself talks about time being a static intellectual concept that is one of
> the very first to emerge from Dynamic Quality. Did he mean that the
> universe was imbued with intellectuality from the start or did he mean that
> the MOQ began with humanity? Does this mean that the Big Bang was Dynamic
> Quality or was the Big Bang caused by Dynamic Quality. If so what does that
> make Dynamic Quality-God?
Hmmm, "the MOQ existed before sentience." No, the MOQ is a static intellectual
pattern, it could only have been around as long as intelligence was around, and
we know that actually it has only been around for perhaps 20 years. But that
does Not mean there was no reality. The MOQ is not reality, it is a set of
lenses by which we interpret reality. The SOM lenses are old and scratchy,
they no longer provide a clear view.
Quality is reality. It is dynamic and static; physical, biological, cultural,
and intellectual. It has been around for as long as anything that has existed,
although specific part hasn't. I don't see where the problem is.
As for the Big Bang, I had some discussions about this a few months ago. It's
really hard to tell since we don't know what existed before, if anything. In
any case, the Big Bang was a physical event. You could say it was the first
dynamic value from which all static values cascaded (but not the last dynamic
value). But both dynamic and static are components of Quality, which simply
means everything--all values. Is Quality God? You could call it that if you
want. I don't but Mark does.
That's one of the great things about the MOQ: how all-encompassing it is.
After Pirsig describes evolution, he addresses the teleologists ("Is there
meaning?") and points out that both are accomodated. There could very well be
a meaning, although it would reside somewhere along or before the leading edge
of experience (DQ), and so even if there was a meaning, we wouldn't know what
it was. If there was a certain plan that DQ was unfolding for us, there's no
way to find out. And, there also might not be a meaning except for the meaning
we give it anyway. So whether or not there is an intelligent God goes either
way, but certainly the MOQ doesn't favor old mythologies about angry or
merciful Supermen who threw out exactly 10 Laws that must be followed to the
letter, lest you burn in eternal hellfire. I think we've outgrown children's
stories. Agnosticism, deism, pantheism, eastern conceptions of God, these are
just as valid as atheism.
> It is said that the MOQ has been in existence always. How do we define
> morality and good in terms of the universe and/or the Earth except as a
> force for interrupting the flow of entropy toward randomness. I have to
> assume that this is so because negentropy is the force that produced
> evolution and us. How does inorganic MOQ fit in with sentient MOQ ? What
> becomes morality and good then? Is it what is good for the human race or is
> it what is good for the Earth? If the two MOQs exist in the sentient SPOVs
> separately which takes precedence? If they are one then what is the
> definition of goodness and morality in those levels? My understanding was
> that morality and goodness was defined in terms of the universe but I
> continually see the terms used as if they applied only to humans.
Again you keep using the term MOQ as a synonym for reality. I agree it is a
philosophy ABOUT reality, but not reality itself. It's just metaphysics. Lets
get right to the heart of the matter: "Is it Good for the human race or is it
what is Good for the Earth?" Both! Pirsig points out that morality applies to
everything--within its own context and in the great scheme of evolution. It is
perfectly moral for a virus to kill a human--to the virus. That's all it can
do: lie dormant or take over host cells. It is perfectly moral for one social
more to overthrow an older one--if it is better. And of course we have to take
into account the grand scheme of evolution and the static levels (literally the
levels of Goodness). Pirsig says that since a human is more evolved than a
virus, it is more moral for a human to kill a virus than vice versa. It is
very immoral for social values to dominate intellectual values. Well, you get
the idea. (BTW, that does not give humans free reign to kill and mame and
destroy everything just because they are more evolved. Remember, no set of
values can exist without the ones below to support it. If we trash our planet,
even though it is just physical, biological, and a little social values, then
we'll die too.)
There is no dichotomy between Inorganic MOQ (actually Quality) and Sentient
MOQ. That almost sounds like a body-mind split again!
Hope this helped.
Cheers,
Martin
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