Dear John B.,
According to me you are too negative about Pirsig in your 6/2
12:33 +1000 post and throw away too much of the child with the
bathwater.
Pirsig's four levels are not yet equivalent to Wilber's four
quadrants. I propose to make them equivalent. That means using
Pirsig's and Wilber's ideas when appropriate and amending them if
necessary.
I agree that in some circumstances it is valuable to stress that
there is no hierarchy between Wilber's quadrants and (if you
follow my proposal) between the levels of static quality in a
MoQ-founded integration of Wilber's and Pirsig's ideas.
'Evolution' and 'migration of static patterns of values toward
DQ' is not 'truth', it is just a metaphor that doesn't apply in
all circumstances.
If Pirsig's claim that his four levels are 'discrete' is read as
'they do not overlap', it makes some other things he wrote
inconsistent.
E.g. in 'Lila' ch. 12 'another platypus called "man." "Man" has a
body (and therefore is not himself a body) and he also has a mind
(and therefore is not himself a mind). But if one asks what is
this "man" (which is not a body and not a mind) one doesn't come
up with anything. There isn't any "man" independent of the
patterns. Man is the patterns. ...
So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all schools
are right on the mind-matter question. Mind is contained in
static inorganic patterns. Matter is contained in static
intellectual patterns. Both mind and matter are completely
separate evolutionary levels of static patterns of value, and as
such are capable of each containing the other without
contradiction.'
I think Pirsig's ideas are (or can without serious problems be
made) consistent with Wilber's idea that everything can only be
fully described by using all four quadrants.
A justified Pirsigian amendment to that idea of Wilber would be,
that not all quadrants of that description are equally relevant.
It is relevant to describe a novel as a collection of ideas, it
is less relevant to describe a novel as a collection of 0's and
1's (or in terms of a typeface) and it is irrelevant to the
extent of absurdity to describe a novel in terms of electric
voltage levels and currents in a computer (or in terms of ink
distribution on paper surfaces). Likewise it seems definitely
less relevant to describe atoms from an 'interior individual'
point of view or to try to describe what happens from an
'exterior individual' point of view in my neocortex when I am
thinking a specific religious concept applying vision-logic.
Platt's ideas 'that DQ created the levels all at once' and that
'at birth we are the embodiment of DQ' do not attract me even
though the idea that the Meaning of our lives may be to spend it
'trying to regain the purity and beauty from whence we came'
does. It's a difference between 'statements of fact' or of truth
about 'Reality' and 'statements of Meaning'.
'Explaining the lower by the higher' and 'first looking to the
higher levels for the general principles of existence, and then,
by subtraction, ... see how far down the hierarchy they extend'
seems sensible for me in this realm of seeking Meaning, not in
the realm of stating Truth.
'Fuller incarnation of higher forms of dynamic quality' and
'evolution of levels in the sense of a series of static latches
left behind by DQ' are both metaphorical and (in my experience of
Meaning) not incompatible at all.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:51 BST