To: David Buchanon
>From :Roger Parker
RE: TRUTH AND DIRECT EXPERIENCE
DAVID:
I offered a pretty
detailed explaination of the meaning of Pirsig's "many truths", which you
barely even mention in your response. Your reply included a reasonable and
relevant Pirsig quote, but you offer nothing at all in terms of an
explaination. You don't say why you think the quote supports your view and
not mine, and frankly I don't see it...... This is the kind of thing I'm
refering to when I complain about folks being
vague. I'll get to the irrational part later.
ROG:
Actually, I think the quote needs very little elaboration. It directly
contradicts much of Matthew's recent arguments (though this doesn't mean he
is wrong, just that his view is contrary to the MOQ). As to yours, I think
that it contradicts your emphasis on four objective truths matching the four
levels of value. For example, attached is a montage of your comments that
lead me to this conclusion:
DAVID MONTAGE:
"As I understand it, we can say there are "many truths" because there are
distinct levels of reality, and those truths are provisional because those
levels are all continuing to evolve..... And I think that the meaning of
Pirsig's many truths concept lies
in the structure of his hierarchy of static patterns. ....... Each level of
static quality is a reality of its own. Each level has its own
set of truths - or rather each level IS a distinct set of truths......Yes,
there are many truths. There are many levels of reality. There are
worlds within worlds. The trick is not to subscribed to some true believer's
orthodoxy, not to invent a private truth of your own, but to "see" all those
truths for what they are. They're different worlds of static Quality."
ROG:
Sorry for the crude cut'n'paste. I was just trying to point out those
sections that most clearly represent your attachment to objective patterns.
The levels of the MOQ, the Dynamic/static cut and SOM are all metaphysical
maps, or "sets of coordinates". By the way, I don't disagree with everything
you wrote above, but more with the objective 'many levels of reality' tone.
As I understand , you believe there is an objective truth within each of the
levels. If this is your opinion, then it contradicts Pirsig and James. If
it isn't your view....sorry!
DAVID:
I wasn't suggesting any
limits about anything. I was describing the meaning of "many truths" in
terms of the MOQ, in terms of the evolution of the levels of static
patterns. Isn't anything less than that just bogus? And it was certainly NOT
wrapped in objectivity. The main thrust of the whole post was that there are
many truths precisely because there are many worlds!
ROGER:
Yea, and that is what I was objecting to. The 'many worlds' analogy or
metaphor or whatever. I think you objectify reality and replace the world of
objective subjects and objects with objective levels of value. I think you
would say that there is a true single construction of reality that best
matches each of the four levels. But then again, I could be very wrong, and
hope you will correct me if so.
DAVID:
I also explicitly admitted that it was more complicated
at the higher levels and that there are probably not just the four we
discuss.
ROGER:
Sorry if I missed this. I read the post as using the four levels as the sole
or primary explanation of 'many truths'.
DAVID:
Pirsig is comparing two different metaphysical systems, two different sets
of intellectual static patterns that explain everything. He's saying that
SOM only allows one truth, objective reality. The MOQ, on the other hand
rejects subjects and objects as ULTIMATE and says that instead, "quality or
excellence is the ultimate reality" where "it becomes possible for more than
one set of truths to exists." I think this summarized what I tried to say
in detail yesterday. I presented the various sets of truth as the static
levels of quality, each with their values, each existing as a world of its
own, with its own set of rules, its own ultimate truth.
ROGER:
I am with you 100% until you get to the last two words of the last line.
This 'ultimate truth' is the objectivity to which I disagree. I read you as
replacing one objective world with four objective worlds. I view the levels
to be metaphysical constructs or coordinate systems, to use Pirsig's
analogies, not objective, ultimate realities.
DAVID:
All paintings
are "real", just as all metaphysical systems are real. Ideas are as real as
rocks, right? But the first part, the provisionality, is where we disagree -
I think.we go through evolutionary stages just like reality itself, but these
complications and complexities don't contradict the notion that "truth" is
provisional because of the ongoing evolutionary nature of things.
ROGER:
I think you will recall from our morality discussions that I am a strong
proponent of the provisional nature of reality. However, I interpret the
quote as applying not just to the dynamic nature of reality, but to the
dynamic nature of truth as well. At the risk of erring on the side of
oversimplification, I would say there can be better explanations to the same
set of experiences. What are your thoughts here , David?
DAVID:
There are many worlds and many levels of truth, but that
doesn't mean that every organism is healthy, that every society is vital or
that every idea is correct.
ROGER:
See? You did it again......'many worlds and many levels of truth'. You set
out a picture of four real objective realities connected via evolution. I
view this as being an oversimplification and distortion of the MOQ.
According to the MOQ, reality is direct experience, and the levels are
'simply intellectual patterns for interpreting reality' to quote the Big
Kahuna. And again, nobody is arguing that 'every idea is correct.' Pirsig
uses the examples of polar coordinates vs rectangular (Mercator) coordinates.
Both can be true. But there is probably a potentially infinite number of
worthless and untrue mapping coordinate systems.
DAVID:
...its clear that we disagree that
"direct experience" is the ultimate measuring stick for truth. I've just
tried to make the case that truth is different at each level because they
are each separate moral empires, worlds within worlds, and that the
excellence or truth of each static pattern has to be determined within the
values at that level. You, on the other hand, are pointing to direct
experience as a yard stick? Aren't you refering to the "pre-intellectual
cutting edge of reality"?
ROGER:
Considering your charge of vagueness, I must complement your keen
understanding of the critical issue. Over the past half a year, I have
provided you with reams of direct quotes from Pirsig and others supporting
that direct experience is Quality which is Value, which is the measure.
Here is a new one I haven't quoted yet....
"Reality, which is value, is understood by every infant. It is a universal
starting place of experience that everybody is confronted with all the time.
Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual
patterns of describing this reality, BUT THE PATTERNS ARE NOT THE REALITY
THEY DESCRIBE." (Ch8 --Emhasis added)
And here is a quote that I have shared so often we are both getting sick of
it....
"...[the MOQ] says the test of the true is the good. It adds that this good
is not a social code or some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is
direct every day experience. Through this identification of pure value with
pure experience, the MOQ paves the way for an enlarged way of looking at
experience which can resolve all sorts of anomalies that traditional
empiricism has not been able to cope with." (Ch 29)
David, what measure is Pirsig suggesting?
DAVID:
How can intellectual static patterns be judged by pre-intellectual
experience? Surely you can see the contradiction is this, even if you don't
buy my "many worlds" explanation. This is an example of the kind of thing
I'm refering to when I complain about irrational views. An unpatterned
pre-intellectual judge of intellectual patterns? You've got to mean
something else, because this is just not rational. Direct experience of DQ
is not the yard stick, it is the creator of intellectual static patterns -
the ground and source and goal of all static quality.
ROGER:
If you want to go off on a new tangent of "How can intellectual static
patterns be judged by pre-intellectual
experience?", I would be glad to participate. As the quotes above show, you
are not accusing me of irrationality on this point, you are accusing the MOQ.
DAVID:
I honestly don't see how "an infinite number of ways to paint direct
experience" explains anything at all. It just seems like a way to avoid
explanations altogether. This is the kind of notion I'm refering to when I
complain about the "many opinions" interpetation.
ROGER:
Well, which painting is the most accurate or truthful interpretation? Which
painting of George Washington is most truthful? Which one best captures his
skin tone? The taste of garlic that was in his mouth from lunch? The carnal
thoughts of Martha that were going through his mind? The quantum state of
the six-billionth-and-first electron from the left side of his right pinkie
during the moment of the final brushstroke?
DAVID:
When you say "direct experience", It seems
like you're talking about something to which [no] one else could ever have
access. The ultimate test of truth is direct experience? Do you mean just
your direct experience or do you mean everybody's? How would we get
everybody's direct experience together? Maybe through language and ideas -
which are static patterns of social and intellectual quality? Oh, but then
it wouldn't be direct experience, would it?
ROGER:
Great questions. This is where metaphysics gets real tough. It becomes
impossible to sort the nature of reality from the nature of knowledge. Again,
these could be great questions for new threads, but my flip answer is that in
a mystic monism such as the MOQ, the solution is that ultimately there is no
distinction.
How do we get everybody's direct experience together? Your answer is
correct... via society. Speaking and thinking and reading and writing are
particular descriptions of direct experience too. But intellectual and social
patterns are not the reality they descibe.
DAVID:
To exist with your own personal and private static patterns is
Pirsig's description of INSANITY, not many truths. (Yoohoo, Horse and Denis,
I'm talking to you too.) To have a different truth for every person would
only mean that every person is SICK and CRAZY. Clearly, this would be very
far from excellent.
ROGER:
I agree. Society is the description of reality where we forge common
understanding and interpretations. Anybody well outside the conventional
agreements would be disfunctional. But there is still a wide range of
acceptable interpretations (the MOQ or SOM?). Rebels are considered wrong or
mistaken or crazy, but sometimes they break through and help the common
interpretation to evolve......
Regards,
Roger
PS -- David really has asked some good questions here. I tossed out some
quick answers to avoid getting sidetracked, but would sure appreciate anybody
else taking a crack at them. I editorialize them as:
1) How does pre-intellectual experience ultimately evalute intellectual
concepts?
2) If Quality is direct experience, how do we separate the nature of reality
from the nature of knowledge?
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