Hullo Marco, Squonk, Elliott, Wim
[Marco]
"when we start talking about something we can't experience we are
actually experiencing it. The MOQ doesn't hold that everything is in our
head, just says that the world out there can't be separated from people."
[Elliott]
"science is a purely aesthetic experience"
[Squonk]
"I have been studying Plotinus recently and have been struck by his
placement
of Human soul as pivot of the universe."
The issue of 'what can we know' seems one of the most complex and yet
important issues that underlies the MOQ. Pirsig says that our experience of
quality, which can be either positive or negative, is primary. From that
experience, we can build theories that are testable through their ability to
predict outcomes. One subset of such theories leads to the subject/object
dilemma, and it is this way of thinking in particular that Pirsig is
concerned to critique and correct.
In my 17.04 post on postmodernism, I made the comment that "each person is
an emergent universe of meaning." I think this is similar to what Plotinus
is saying, according to Squonk, (since I have never read him). The meaning
each person creates is drawn from his/her experience of quality, which leads
to discriminating the differences that matter (Bateson). The world may well
exist in some huge complexity (or elegant simplicity) outside of my
experience, but the models I construct of it are inevitably built upon that
experience, which includes not just immediate sensory experience, but second
or third order generalisations about the world that I pick up from others
through language and culture. Two points.
1. My encounter with quality allows me to discriminate what matters. Value
or quality is the primary experience of each person. What matters is
ultimately what matters to the person. Value makes no sense otherwise, which
is why I continue to dispute the use of value as some reified term prior to
my personal experience.
(We have had the recent example of judging the ability of carbon atoms to
bond with great diversity somehow interpreted as competing with other
elements, since in Wim's words "There is apparantly 'value' in forming and
re-forming these compounds." I cannot accept this. The 'apparently' betrays
the uncertainty behind such a statement. This is where trying "our utmost to
write MoQish" is actually to lose touch with the careful logic of Pirsig's
position and to adopt a new 'religion'.)
2. The evidence about the world that I can draw from experience is of
different types, depending upon its source. Immediate experience of dynamic
quality can be very direct, very dynamic. An example is Pirsig's experience
with peyote. Another is the victim of a heart attack looking at his hand
with wonder and delight as he recovers in hospital. Another is sitting on a
hot stove. Whatever words the person might put on such experience, there is
no doubting the 'value' inherent in the experience, and that it matters to
them profoundly.
However, much of our lives is lived, perhaps tragically, in our minds, where
memories of past experience, codified in language, are used to reflect on
the past or guide our actions in the future. While there is undoubtedly
'value' in this ability, and our culture rests upon it, this is second order
experience. It makes sense to ask about such knowledge, "Is it true?" Just
because something sounds possible does not make it true. In our inner
dialogues, much that is taken as given is fundamentally 'fantasy', a belief
that because I think 'this' caused 'that' in the past, 'this' will cause
'that' again in the future. Already a whole lot of assumptions are built in,
one of which is causality. Another is that this 'this' is actually the same
as that 'this'. We assume that our terms and categories are firm and clear,
when often they are not. And it is at this level that neurosis flourishes.
We can continue to project our past experience onto the reality of the
present, and never notice we are doing it.
Third order generalisations are even more distant from immediate reality.
They include all sorts of schemes for organising our reality in systems of
meaning. But as Wilber said of metaphysics, it can mean "thought without
evidence". Such schemes seem at times very attractive, almost addictive, and
people will make huge sacrifices, even life itself, in defense of them.
Systems of belief and structures of meaning such as modern science, or a
metaphysics, can enthrall their devotees, and such schemes are immensely
important to social functioning. But at this level it is unlikely that any
grand plan can be said to encompass the 'truth' of what is, (see 'Quantum
Questions', edited by Wilber, for physicists views on this), and as Pirsig
pointed out with science, hypotheses can proliferate beyond what is
testable.
To summarise, immediate experience is ultimately the source of all our
knowledge, but we mediate this in words and concepts, and invent higher
order explanatory systems, that are distanced from such immediate
experience. The MOQ is one such system. That it points to immediate
experience of quality is its great virtue; that it remains a metaphysics is
its great weakness.
Is there any way beyond this outline of what can be known? The mystics say
"Yes". As I have argued in my new essay in the forum, for mystics there is
one over-riding moral imperative, that is immediacy. In fact, as I read the
mystics, all other moral values collapse into different aspects of
immediacy. In terms of the model I have set out above, the mystic argues for
the good to be located in immediate experience, and deplores our tendancy to
live remote from immediate experience in words and systems. Not that words
and systems are unimportant, for they have important instrumental value, but
they are not in themselves 'real'.
Here I directly disagree with Marco, above, when he claims that talking
about something is 'experiencing' it. Not so, for the words already
represent the consequences of static latching. I can imagine that at once
the argument will come up that I can be excited by an idea, for example, and
this is dynamic. OK, I can shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre and go to jail
for it, since just shouting the word has consequences. I don't argue with
this. But I can always ask of any statement, "Is it true?", and this is a
different test than applies to immediate experience. (Immediate experience
can also be misleading, as in psychotic states such as the film 'A Beautiful
Mind' showed, and this is another issue).
And as Pirsig notes about writing a metaphysics, it leaves a hangover. The
excitement of trying to get a tidy system of ideas together is real, but it
is playing with ideas and concepts that lack immediacy. The excitement is
more competitive, more about game playing. I suspect that it is this which
drives a forum such as this. It is built on comparison and judgement, but
just as science is undercut by ever proliferating hypotheses, so system
building is forever incomplete, since each explanation tends to come with
its own set of assumptions, and they can be challenged in an infinite
regress.
As I further argue in my essay, the mystic position leads to a very special
morality, what I would term an 'integral morality'. Whereas the assumption
of many who contribute to this forum is that understanding the MOQ can lead
to better decision making, I reject that view. Not only does it not work in
practice, as we see time and again, but static structures cannot organise
the dynamic. The mystic view, in a nutshell, is that the more open I am to
what is, here and now, without the intrusion of the past through thoughts
and ideas, the more real is my contact with reality, and that in and of
itself will generate moral action. Morality, in this view, is not derived
from a code and applied to the situation. It flows from the immediate
involvement in the situation. It is situational ethics writ large. But, and
this is important, it is the quality of the here and now experience that
makes the emerging action moral.
At this point we move beyond what can be argued in words. If the mystics are
right, their rightness cannot be shown through argument. It requires an
experiential commitment to test their views. I do not know if they are
right. However I am increasingly aware of the limitations of language and
thought. They are indeed poisoned fruit. They offer us the ability to plan
and predict, and that is no small advantage. At the same time they alienate
and destroy our immediacy, and cause us to lose what is of most value.
Perhaps it is possible to have both, but I am convinced that if this is so
it is not that we can regain immediacy through taking more thought, but
rather that thought can be returned to its rightful domain once immediacy is
once more central to our lives.
John B
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