ELEPHANT TO 3WD:
I liked your post about computer screens, and actually think it supports
what i've been saying so very obscurely - which may surprise you, but I will
try to explain myself better (MUST DO BETTER).
3WD WROTE:
> Oh large grey one,
>
> More and more I find myself wincing whenever I hear a phrase like
> "because the static patterns are just that:STATIC." (my emphasis) I
> think Pirsig's self admitted bias against "static" ("static patterns are
> dead") can lead to a misunderstanding of the nature of static patterns
> and particularly their relationship to dynamic. I call on your
> familiarity with James as broach this metaphoric hypothesis.
>
> Your computer in logged on to the Internet with your network browser
> e-mail window open on the monitor screen. If you just sit and stare at
> the the desktop it lies there just as you last left it. A static pattern
> of values. But is it really static? Not really, the "I" bar might be
> blinking someplace, if you have a menu clock its ticking off the
> seconds, maybe a network log on indicater is blinking. Your direct every
> instant experience is dynamic. Only as your thoughts kick in and you
> know a little bit about electronics do you conjure up the static
> patterns of ac power wiggling up from the wall plug, monitor refresh
> rate, processor megahertz, all static patterns of value dynamically
> changing instant by instant while presentling an apparently static image
> on the screen.
ELEPHANT:
Well of course: nothing is really static. Isn't that just the point I'm
making against our patterns? The computer can be considered two ways: first
as the series of static states (0 and 1) which are, from the point of veiw
of its functioning, all there is, are analogous (only) to our own
dichotomous reasoning on which they are modelled. But then besides this
intellectual reality, there is the real reality of all the fluctuations
(flux-uations) of varying electronic flows, and even the refresh rates and
varying of your eye position in relation to the screen are rendering the
colours is slighly different shades - etc. Quite so. Nothing I could
disagree with. Nothing to make the static patterns less static. All your
argument shows is that we can always have static patterns on a smaller
scale: that is, measure the flow rates with greater precision etc. But
static patterns are always going to be like sticking a pair of brackets
around a passage of the continuum and treating it as a unit, and no final
peeling of the atomic onion will ever come along to change this fundamental
metaphysical fact.
3WD:
> I've said before that James concept/percept split is very similar to
> Pirsig's static/dynamic split. Percepts/dynamic being experience prior
> to intellectualization, concepts/static after. But James then goes on to
> discuss in detail the relationship between concepts and percepts
> concluding that they are in fact experience as a union and that a
> direct back and forth interrelationship exists where concepts are
> changed by percepts and,more importantly, the reverse. Pirsig is less
> clear on these issues which might lead one to conclude that static does
> not and cannot change the dynamic flux. I believe this is a mistaken
> interpretation. Or to use a James catch phrase, your "Will to
> Believe",the static patterns of your beliefs, your concepts, can and do
> change your reality and not just your static patterns but ultimately to
> some degree your dynamic reality.
ELEPHANT:
Well this is true. I completely agree that static patterns take place, are
experienced, within the dynamic reality. And I agree that the static
patterns colour your dynamic reality in two ways, first because any
description of our dynamic reality must include such linguistic entities (as
in: 'slowly, though a haze of creased linen and fresh coffee, I became aware
*that* I had left the computer on all night' - where a 'knowing that' is a
propositional knowing but the awareness of the proposition's truth remains
dynamic), and second through being a practical programme for action (turn
the damm thing off,: this being the MOQ understanding of 'theory'.
The difficulty comes because you use the word 'changed' in relation to the
dynamic reality, and not just the patterns that we substitute for it (such
as 'computer'). In my veiw, in order for their to be change there has to be
some identity of the thing to be changed: change must coexist with the
stable identity, static for however fleeting a moment, of the thing changed.
Since dynamic reality is precisely what we mean by what is beyond any static
identity, even fleeting ones, it doesn't make sense to talk of the dynamic
reality as 'changing', irrespective of whether or not the candidate force
for change is a Jamesian concept. Calling the dynamic 'restless' is OK,
because it states facts. You can even say that the restlessness is somehow
coloured by, experienced through the lens of, the Concepts: indeed that's
just what I have been saying. But for something to be both dynamic and
changing is a contradiction in terms: nothing changes without the static
identity, however fleeting, of the thing changed. IMHO your argument, and
in the examples you use re computers etc, seems to mix up the prisigian
'dynamic' notion with some notion of extreme 'change', and, likewise, to be
mixing up Jamesian 'flux'/'stream of consciousness' with 'a series of
tremendously fleeting stabilities'. The difference between dynamic and the
static is not that the dynamic is comparitively unstable: instability of the
sort we might find within the electical currents of a computer is measured
by, only has meaning in terms of, static patterns - measuring techniques.
The difference isn't one of degree, it is one of kind.
3WD WROTE:
> If we carry on with the computer metaphor, as you possibly respond to
> this you dynamically interact with the stable (static) patterns on your
> desktop composing an appropriate response, type, click, bong, send,
> sent, packets split, converge, arrive. I then dynamically experience the
> static patterns of startup, logon, download, double click, open, read,
> laugh, cry, snort. So a whole bunch of very static patterns of value
> somehow changed my direct, dynamic, everyday experience. And though we
> may not be able to trace all these static steps and say just how it
> dynamically happened, we can empircally verify this by doing it over and
> over again until we believe the concepts of "type" "click" etc. to be
> useful, and therefore good and true.
ELEPHANT:
I have addressed your points about the presence of static patterns in
dynamic experience above. As to your last point: I have never denied this.
What I have been arguing (split across a number of threads so you may have
missed it) is that there are two levels of 'true' here. Of course what the
majority of people mean by 'true', and indeed what science means by 'true',
is in jamesian language a variety of the good: simply that subset of the
good which contains propositions. However there is another sense of 'true',
and I think it is this sense of the 'true' according to which it is true
that no intellectual construct of discrete causes and events and their
relations can ever be an accurate description of anything, such as
experienced reality, which is essentially continuous. This is a purely
logical observation: a necessary truth, rather than an obviously good one.
Indeed it might be argued to be an inconveinient or a down right bad truth,
as it might tend to impede necessary confidence in the static patterns by
which human beings navigate the world at every level. Nevertheless it is
true. I beleive that on a deeper understanding of what really is Good, this
second kind of truth and The Good do converge - but that's besides the point
here. At this stage it is enough to point out that there is more than one
kind of truth, and that the second mystical kind is a crucial theme in
Prisig's work, every bit as much center-stage as the pragmatic kind: largely
because Prisig is lead towards the Pragmatist position on the scientific
variety of truth by some deeply mystical reasoning, much as William James
was. Look up Prisig's discussion of the connection between Jamesian radical
empiricism (the mystical side) and Jamesian pragmatism.
What Prisig self-effacingly calls 'bias' against static patterns: I think
this is really at the center of his thinking and part of the mystical
reflections which lead him to the conception of static patterns per se:
there is an intended contrast in the name 'static pattern' which just can't
get going if you don't have an idea of the Dynamic as fundamentally more
real. He wouldn't want you to go away with the idea that he's for doing
away with stsatic patterns, but all the same he wants us to take a subtly
different attitude to them: to remember that they exist as useful and
creative intellectual inventions, and to treat them as such.
There are strong parrallels between this aspect of Prisig's thought and
Buddhism, parrallels which he himself draws and work on. Re this see link:
http://www.buddsoc.org.uk/world_s.htm
TTFN
Puzzled Elephant
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