Keith A. Gillette (gillette@tahc.state.tx.us)
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 05:24:36 +0100
At 10:06 PM +0000 7/17/98, Diana McPartlin wrote:
>Keith and squad
>
>Liked the essay and the conclusion (greatly simplified) that static
>quality is pattern and dynamic quality is not-pattern. It's a more
>refined explanation than change vs stability and avoids arguments on
>things like "constant changes" etc.
Thanks for the feedback. After the delay of nearly a week, I had assumed
my essay had fallen on deaf ears or had exceeded the buffer size of the
list's readers and been discarded. ;-)
ON NAMING AND PATTERNS
One note on the Pattern/Not-pattern definition of Static/Dynamic you
drew from my essay. While that is a pretty accurate representation of a
portion of my thought (and certainly a lot more accessible than the 3K
of text I wrote!), I think it's a bit misleading. If we are going to
talk about Static and Dynamic Quality in terms of patterns, I would
characterize it more as:
Static Quality = Pattern
Dynamic Quality = Pattern & Not Pattern
Dynamic Quality is the tricky term here. I argued in my last post that
Quality is a mystic unity. All I meant by that is that any intellectual
understandings (ideas) we have of reality are incomplete. I argued for
that with an "infinite explanation" line of reasoning, pointing out that
any given experience affords an infinite number of consistent
explanations, indicating that the reality itself is beyond any
particular explanation. That line of reasoning works for me, but I'd
love to hear more arguments from the other mystics on the list.
(Applications of Gödel's theorem, etc.)
Now obviously, reality is not totally beyond words, as we do quite well
giving names to objects of our experience and specifying fixed
relationships among them. We can do this because aspects of our
experience are patterned. Anything that is patterned can be given a name
and understood intellectually. This is Static Quality. Anything we can
talk about in words is Static Quality.
If Static Quality is everything that has a pattern, then by the law of
the excluded middle, Dynamic Quality is that which is not patterned. Not
patterned? What does that mean? Something that is changing in every way
all the time? If that's the case we wouldn't be able to be able to
recognize it, would we? In what sense would it exist, even? It wouldn't
be a "thing" to be called if every aspect of "it" was changing in every
way all the time. It's nonsense. Meaningless.
So we run into trouble when we try to "define" Dynamic Quality in terms
of anything else, I think. This is what Pirsig pointed to whenever he
talked about holding Quality undefined. As soon as you say anything
substantive about it, you start being misleading. So I agree with
Sojourner when he says we aren't really coming up with a new definition.
That's why I argued that Dynamic Quality is just a placeholder. I've
come to think of it as a metaphysical "zero" to remind us that these
static ideas we have about reality are incomplete. This is necessary
because we do *so well* naming parts of experience that we forget that
there's more to reality than what we think. In the words of Alfred
Korzybski, "The map is not the territory."
What does that witticism mean? I understand it like this: We have this
thing called Reality that we know through Experience. In our attempt to
understand Reality, we analyze and synthesize the data of Experience
into intellectual explanations which identify Static Quality. The funny
thing is we can come up with an infinite number of explanations of this
Static Quality, an infinite number of maps using different coordinate
systems, that help us navigate Reality. So the Static Quality itself is
something beyond our ideas of it. The map is not the territory.
What is that "something else"? Dynamic Quality. But it's not really
something else, or else we'd have a Static name and explanation for it
already. Since each pattern of Static Quality, each thing, is really
beyond our limited understanding of it (see my bit on every experience
being nonrational in my last post), then each "thing" is really Dynamic
Quality.
So Dynamic Quality is every-"thing" in that all things are beyond our
name or description for them and no-"thing" in that *things* arise by
separating them from the rest of the world under some fixed, limited,
Static understanding. That's why Lao Tzu says "Naming is the origin of
all particular things."
This is why I would argue, with Martin Striz and others, against
identification of Dynamic Quality with, for example, energy. Energy is a
fixed concept we use to relate the interaction of another fixed concept,
matter. Both are Static Quality--patterns we've given names to. Dynamic
Quality is reality itself.
But when we're talking about reality, we break it down into pieces and
relate them. We talk about Static Quality, identified through our
current understanding of Reality. We can only talk about Dynamic Quality
as that which goes beyond our current Static understanding.
I feel here like I'm talking in circles, like I've rehashed the same
point twenty times. Each time I say what I'm trying to say, I seem to be
moving further away from it. I think Sojourner's analogy to the serpent
biting its tail is perfect. That circular, "Möbius strip" feeling is
exactly the feeling I'm getting writing this because that's what the
relationship between Dynamic Quality and Static Quality is like. We
divide Reality into Static Quality or "things" based on patterns. But
our conception of these "things" is limited, and Reality is really
beyond our words, it's Dynamic Quality. But we go ahead and divide it up
into Static Quality ...
So perhaps to clarify my naming "definition" of last time and avoid the
problems pointed out with identifying Static Quality with Pattern, I'd
amend my Lao Tzu-inspired interpretation of Static/Dynamic to read:
Static Quality is that which can be named
Dynamic Quality is that which can and cannot be named
ON MORALITY
>But still we're missing any mention of morality and how it fits into
>this. Pirsig states quite clearly that dynamic quality is of a higher
>morality than static. And, in case nobody noticed this Pirsig quote from
>personal correspondence with Anthony, here it is again:
>
>"Every time you discover for the first time that something is better
>than something else - that is where Dynamic Quality exists. There is no
>fixed static location for it."
I interpret Pirsig's message to Anthony McWatt as meaning that we are
put in touch with Dynamic Quality--Reality--every time experience
teaches us something we didn't know before. We go along in life with our
fixed intellectual representations of reality and the valuations that go
along with them, but suddenly discover through some experience that
something in our ideas wasn't quite right and intuit that something is
missing. Eventually, we'll be able to put our finger on the problem and
express that new Dynamic insight in static terms.
I don't know that this necessarily implies that Dynamic Quality is
"better" than Static Quality. I agree with much of Sojourner's reply on
this matter. I think that our *sense* of "betterness" comes from our
Experience of Dynamic Quality (Reality). Since we have no previously
existing understanding (Static understanding of Quality) of this
betterness, we can only identify it as Dynamic Quality. Just as easily,
however, I think we could experience undefined "worseness" that's just
as much an experience of Dynamic Quality as undefined "betterness". (See
the canonical hot stove example in *Lila* on this situation.)
As to the question of how Morality fits into this, you're quite right
that I didn't really address that in my post other than to cite Pirsig's
ontological assertion in *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*
that Reality is Value (aka Quality or Morality). I didn't say more
because I haven't yet come up with a satisfactory understanding of this
relationship myself. I asked this question at the end of March in my
"Conceptions of Dynamic Quality" thread. My current thinking on this
topic is still muddled.
I've wrapped my mind around the Mystic Reality, but why does this Mystic
Reality also have to be a Moral Continuum? (And why must I randomly
capitalize Important Words? ;-) Pirsig gives us an answer within a
Subject/Object framework in *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*
by showing that quality is neither in the subject nor the object and
therefore must be a third independent entity. *Lila* is filled with
examples of how seeing the world as value-centered rather than
substance-centered leads to better explanations of experience. Both of
these go some distance in making the connection, but I don't find them
100% compelling for some reason. I think that's probably because our
human conception of morality has been so conditioned by questions of
social morality, that we find it quite a stretch to include *everything*
in our experience under the umbrella of
morality.
But that's exactly what Pirsig's philosophy does. It places The Good at
the center and says everything else is secondary and derivative from
that. Until we begin our discussion of the levels of evolution, however,
we can't say too much about this central Good, since the particular
moral judgments we might make depend on the particular aspects of
experience we're speaking about and their evolutionary relationship to
one another.
At the level of Static and Dynamic Quality, where our current discussion
centers, I think we can only say two things: 1. The understanding of
Static and Dynamic places limits on what we can say about morality. Our
Static judgments will always be subject to Dynamic understanding through
experience, so that our moral judgments will change when our scientific
understanding changes, since the two are tied together. 2. Every
distinction is a moral distinction. Anything we pick out in the world
has a moral relationship to everything else, since everything arises
from The Good (Dynamic Quality). Some of these relationships may be
insignificant, others may be very significant. Whether we see them as so
depends on our current intellectual understanding of the relationship
between the two.
These two points are very important. Earlier in this thread, Theo
Schramm raised the specter of the Metaphysics of Quality turning into a
(gasp!) subjective enterprise because of a point Ken Clark brought up on
the splintering of the single morality (Dynamic Quality) into different
parts (Static Quality) and those parts being subjectively determined by
each person. As I said in my last post, what saves Pirsig's philosophy
from being a subjective idealism is that it always appeals to Reality
through Experience to test our conceptions of Static Quality.
Hopefully, this empirical test of our ideas about reality (Static
understanding being subject to Dynamic understanding through Experience)
leads to a common intersubjective agreement as to the best explanation
of the world. This best explanation covers the widest range of
experience, explaining it with the greatest precision and accuracy. As
new experience warrants (Dynamic Quality presents "itself"), this
agreement is modified accordingly. This is the essence of scientific
thinking, which many have accepted as providing the best explanations of
our universe. Unfortunately, many more have not, and appeal to faith,
etc. in their worldviews. In this way, morality may come to be seen as
subjective, giving us many different viewpoints on the "same" questions.
Really, the questions are not the same, since we're approaching them
from a different metaphysical base. If we can
come to consensus on the best explanation of reality as the scientific
explanation of reality (one that appeals to experience), and we also
accept The Good as the fundamental parameter of the universe, then we
will have a non-subjective, but changeable (allowances for Dynamic
insight), shared morality. Until that time, however, we'll have
controversy, name-calling, hatred, and bloodshed.
ON MATERIALISM
An aside on the "best explanation" mentioned above. In this post and the
last, I've referred to scientific explanation of reality as the best
explanation of reality we have. It's best because it accords most with
Experience, which we know to be The Good, Dynamic Quality. Ken Clark has
continued to argue for his conception of Dynamic Quality as an aspect of
the material universe. In his last post, for example, he writes:
At 12:22 PM +0000 7/19/98, Clark wrote:
> Dynamic Quality is the complete (and changing) range of possibilities
>presented by the physical organization of the universe.
I don't necessarily have argument with the "range of possibilities"
aspect of his explanation, as I think that probably plays a part in our
understanding of Dynamic Quality, but I would argue vehemently against
the "physical organization" part. As with those who identified Dynamic
Quality with Energy, I think Ken is putting (in Pirsigian terms) the
metaphysical cart before the horse by subscribing to materialism. Ken
often writes that Dynamic Quality starts with the Big Bang and is
evidenced in the evolution of the universe. Now I happen to believe in
the Big Bang theory, out of our current options in cosmology, but I
recognize this theory as a *theory*, an
explanation of reality. Regarding Dynamic Quality in the context of a
physical explanation of the universe is putting a theory of reality
before Reality (Dynamic Quality) itself. The Static/Dynamic split, the
recognition that Reality is fundamentally beyond words, must come first.
Then we can start arguing about the best way to describe reality, when
our universe started, how it evolved, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong adherent to physicalist explanations of
phenomenon and don't believe in the paranormal, and would defend the
theory of evolution, and of the big bang, etc., but they must be
regarded as our current best efforts in explaining our experience of
reality, not reality itself.
Further, I think Ken's expertise and understanding will help us greatly
when we start talking about the levels of evolution next month, since
the answers to specific moral questions we ask depend greatly on the
specific details of the scientific theories in currency. We need to
understand the evolution of the universe to resolve our moral questions,
since Pirsig's system depends on empirical observations and the
resultant scientific
explanations for its superstructure. I only mean to point out that the
Static/Dynamic split underlies that structure and points to the fact
that Reality itself is always beyond the explanations contained in the
scientific superstructure.
IN SUMMARY
Well, that was a good four hours of blathering for me, quite enough for
anyone's taste, I'm sure. If I had to wrap up my understanding of the
Static/Dynamic split, I'd say something like: Dynamic Quality is the
undivided whole of Reality, which is composed of pure Value. Dynamic
Quality is known to us through Experience and intellectually understood
as patterns of Static Quality. Dynamic Quality and Static Quality are
not in themselves separate, but only through the act of dividing and
naming for intellectual analysis do they appear so.
Best to all,
Keith
______________________________________________________________________
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