Ant McWatt (ant11@liverpool.ac.uk)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 07:19:00 +0100
January 27th 1998
Hello Diana, Bo and the LS,
Diana
Thanks for all your work on the Principles (and the LS in
general) which I hope isn't driving you too mad.
Just a couple of comments to drive you round the bend even
further!
I'm sorry to insist on this point but the statement
"Quality is the ethical principle of Quality (or the Good)"
doesn't scan well; it seems to state that Quality is a part
of itself which is not logical.
Having said this, to state that Quality is an ethical
principle is a good point so I suggest it could be
re-phrased as something like "The MOQ perceives reality as
being in a moral order" or "The MOQ perceives reality as
being ethical".
I'm not so sure whether the MOQ (being a set of static
intellectual patterns) is actually a path to enlightenment.
I certainly wouldn`t put that on the Internet. However, I
think you can say that the MOQ can assist on a mystic
journey to enlightenment.
Value. The second line would be more intelligible if it
said something like "In the MOQ the determinate phrase "A
causes B" is replaced by the indeterminate phrase "B values
pre-condition A". There is no such thing as substance as
commonly thought within the MOQ. In this system everything
that exists is perceived as some type of value."
Dynamic Quality and static quality. For the second line
I'd state "Dynamic Quality is pure, indeterminate
experience; static quality is stable, determinate
experience". It sounds like you`re saying that Dynamic
Quality can`t be distinguished; that is what mystic
experience is for.
To answer your question, I'd say "immediate, undivided,
experience" (in the world of everyday affairs) is
applicable for any entity that has experience. From what I
gather from what Pirsig has written and Bodvar's "Quality
Event" is that everything (from sub-atomic particles to
people) has experience. It's just that this experience is
fundamentally different depending where you are on the
evolutionary ladder; a person's experience being that much
richer (on the whole) than a dog's, tree's or brick's. (To
suggest otherwise, brings back that old mind-matter
problem). From a mystic point of view, I'd say experience
creates all entities from sub-atomic particles to people so
the question for whom or what HAS the experience does not
apply (as experience has them).
"Quality defined as reality". Reality is the answer I used
to always give my supervisor but he always said it doesn't
say very much. That doesn't mean my supervisor is right or
that it can't be in our "Principles of Quality" so don't
take too much heed of my previous negative comment about
this. However, my supervisor's comment is the reason I
decided to use the quote "Quality is the first slice of
undivided experience" in my principles (and the essay they
were derived from) as it is stating what Pirsig actually
thinks reality fundamentally is.
This quote comes from the middle of the first page (in
bold) in the essay which I asked Pirsig to check (before
submission). He stated that "It will be interesting to see
if there is anyone who can find legitimate fault with it.
I find none" so I highly doubt the "slice quote" is out of
context. However, that particular phrase "the first slice"
does have to be read carefully not to be misconstrued. I
therefore don't think it is a good idea to have it in the
principles where it is likely to cause confusion especially
for people new to the MOQ. Maybe a phrase such as "Quality
is immediate, undivided, experience" would be better.
The "immediate" component of the above is something you
also take issue with. Is reality only the present or are
the past and future equally real? A good question. Again
in the above essay, Pirsig didn't query the phrase
"immediate" in the context of "undivided experience"
because he equates "Quality" with F.S.C. Northrop's
"aesthetic continuum" which Northrop defines as "what is
IMMEDIATELY perceived in an all embracing (emotion
producing) field" (see Northrop's 1948 "Logic of the
Sciences & Humanities" and Pirsig's "SODV" which equates
Dynamic Quality with Northrop's "indeterminate aesthetic
continuum").
Personally, I don't think the past or future exists
even from a static point of view (and remember the above
paragraphs and our principles are static intellectual
patterns). However, I think you are right to say that from
a Dynamic viewpoint that the past, present and future are
all merged into one and there is no such thing as the
"present" or even time.
Diana, I like the quote you chose about the nature of
reality and zero friends; I certainly do think it must be a
lot easier to be a mystic sometimes. And I'm sure I'd have
a lot more friends if I was! Finally, when these
principles are more or less finalized to everyone's
satisfaction, I suggest it would be a good idea to run
through them with Pirsig.
Bodvar
The extrapolation you make from the static intellectual
pattern of time to every static intellectual pattern is yet
another excellent one I have received from you over the
past two years; the point that everything that is an
abstraction (space, mathematics, philosophy etc) is a
STATIC intellectual pattern of value seems to me to be a
very important one and is something I had not thought of
previously.
As well as a presentation for the post-grads on February
12th, I was asked in December by the Philosophy Department
to present my first PUBLIC lecture for them this term; that
means one hour of talking and one hour for questions. As
this will be aimed at a generally high academic level (and
I will be presenting the MOQ) I am quite concerned on
getting a few things clear in my mind hence my request over
assistance with Pirsig's comment concerning preferences
(creating particles) and the relationship between MOQ and
space.
I hope to tie in one of the above papers with the material
I have produced with Eric for publication which should
hopefully save me some work. I will ask him about joining
the LS the next time I e-mail him; he'd definitely be a
controversial member! I briefly met him for a pub lunch
earlier this month to discuss our work so far; his "Big
thing" about the MOQ now is ORDER and to a lesser extent
FREEDOM (the "Quality Event" will be helpful here). He
thought he saw a fatal contradiction between the MOQ and
time because time is a component of Quality yet an ordering
principle for it i.e. the static patterns of Quality have
evolved over TIME and are therefore ORDERED by it. I still
haven't had much opportunity to think of a complete answer
for him though I think Pirsig's and your recent comments
are halfway there to an answer to what I suspect is yet
another largely linguistic problem.
Doug
Thanks very much for the numerous references about quantum
preferences and vacuums in the books mentioned and on the
Internet - I will follow up as many of these as I can
before the 12th. I have kept all the e-mails on the LS
since early December and have probably missed the gist of
the ones on VED, VES etc not knowing what the acronyms
stood for. I'll check them out again.
Magnus
Glad you liked all the Pirsig stuff. I think your comment
that velocity is even a more complicated concept than time
is correct (so I won't be telling my MOQ opponent Eric
about this just yet!) If you could explain why an absolute
speed of light "hardwires" space and time together that
would be helpful (I guess it has something to do with
general relativity but I'm not sure of the exact
relationships here). Maybe the speed of light isn't an
absolute as previously thought and I'd definitely go along
with Bodvar's extension (of Pirsig's comment on time) that
everything that is an abstraction such as velocity or space
is a STATIC intellectual pattern of value trying to explain
(or predict) aspects of reality.
Ken
I'm not surprized you needed a drink after giving me a
brief history of the physical universe!
Your summary touched any many of the themes I've been
looking at recently. Just a couple of minor comments here:
The superstring theory uses ten or twenty-six dimensions to
account for gravity in relation with quantum particles.
According to Barry Parker in "Search for a Supertheory" the
six dimensions (out of the ten) or twenty-two dimensions
(out of the twenty-six) have remained compacted since the
Big Bang; hence their absence in our everyday perception.
The four making-up "space-time" obviously expanded though
at the time of Parker's book (1987) no one knew why these
particular four had expanded and the others had not. Maybe
Doug knows what has happened more recently?
To add to your comment that the universe has no edges yet
is a closed system, I read recently (preparing that paper
of mine) that if you draw points on a balloon and then
inflate it this gives a good analogy (minus one of the
"expanded" dimensions) to explain why you always appear to
be in the centre of the universe (with all the other stars
moving away) irrespective of your position within it.
I think that if we all tried to define what we mean by
Dynamic Quality we'd get some very interesting answers.
However, Pirsig does emphasis continually that Dynamic
Quality has got to be free of concepts. Once you define
something you can cut it up with Phaedrus's analytic knife
and subordinate it intellectually. I think Pirsig
introduced the concept of Dynamic Quality in LILA to keep
Quality undefined on the mystic level and to avoid the
consequences set in motion by Plato and Aristotle with
their "definitions" of the Good. On the mystic level,
everything (including the static patterns of Quality) is
Dynamic Quality so a definition is impossible being the
attempt to fit a larger box into a smaller one. The only
definition of Dynamic Quality as such is itself (and that
is if you can have a definition that's not just
intellectual).
To help me understand it, I refer to what Eastern mystics
call "nothingness", the "Tao" (see ZMM) or "Dharma" (see
LILA). The best books about these, I have read so far,
have been John Blofeld's "The Secret & Sublime: Taoist
Mysteries & Magic" (1973) (some funny stories about wise
old sages in there) and Walpola Rahula's "What the Buddha
taught" (1959/enlarged edt. 1967)(which is the most
authentic Buddhist text I've read yet). For instance, the
latter says the following about "Quality/Dynamic Quality"
(which he calls the Dharma or Dhamma):
"There is no term in Buddhist terminology wider than
dhamma. It includes not only the conditioned things and
states (static patterns of value), but also the
non-conditioned, the Absolute, Nirvana (Dynamic Quality
from the "everyday or static viewpoint"). There is nothing
in the universe or outside, good or bad, conditioned or
non-conditioned, relative or absolute which is not included
in this term."
Buddhists believe that ultimately everything is
non-conditioned i.e. not absolute (that's why the belief of
an independent personality or subject is discounted by
them) which means they have the same confusion as we have
with Dynamic Quality and Quality depending on whether the
viewpoint taken is mystic (Dynamic) or static (world of
everyday affairs). However, once you can grasp the
difference (and it took me quite a while) you can then see
what mystics are going on about when they say reality is
both the "one (~Dynamic) and the many (~static)".
I look forward to hearing from you all,
Anthony.
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