ROGER OFFERS SYNTHESIS AND NEW OBSERVATIONS
ON INTELLECT VS MYSTICAL DIRECT EXPERIENCE
To Platt, Rob, David and Friends:
The story has been unfolding as such….. Rob keeps asking the same question
over and over again in different forms (because he is not satisfied with the
answers). In brief it is:
>>>>>Who is the better judge of a moral question, an open-minded, sensitive
person or one who is well versed in the MOQ?>>>>>
David and I have repeatedly been stressing that it is not an either or
question. David captured the issues brilliantly:
>>>>>Pirsig is very sympathetic to the idea that one can get trapped in
static intellectual patterns or get stuck using bad intellectual maps,
but its also very clear that he is a philosopher and takes ideas and
their history very seriously……..
…It[freedom] comes only after a long intellectual journey. They[Lila and ZMM]
both refer to the mystical experience that comes after a lot of work.
That's why the mystical experience is at a higher level than the
intellect. Mysticism isn't irrational, it is post-rational. It comes
sometime after the realization that ideas, philosophies and isms are
just analogies, just tools. But you've got to have a mind to loose it.>>>>>>
And I wrote:
>>>>Direct experience and intellectual knowledge are both necessary for growth
toward Dynamic Quality. Mystical, pure undifferentiated experience is DQ, but
intellectual advancement (a form of DQ) enlarges the universe that is
experienced. Mystical experience and intellectual advancement are two self re-
enforcing dimensions of the path. Direct experience is depth, knowledge is
breadth.>>>>>
When forced to choose (for argument’s sake) I finally committed that a mind
open to Direct Experience is preferable to knowledge about the MOQ. I suspect
I know what David’s answer is too, though I will let him speak for himself.
Platt now answers:
>>>>One well versed in the MOQ. What's the
alternative? Just what we have today--moral relativism--where everyone
and anyone is free to do his own thing without fear of punishment (except
maybe murder, but then again look at O.J.).>>>>
My concern with your answer ,Platt, is that you have shifted the conversation
to an either/or along the lines of "follow the MOQ or be a moral relativist."
These are not the only choices. And to further complicate, as you will
remember in our Morality discussion month, most Lila Squaders, when applying
the MOQ, hit a Relative Morality dead end as well. Knowledge of the MOQ is
not the inverse of Moral Relativity.
To clarify, I am not saying that the MOQ is morally relative. I am saying that
I disagree with the way you framed the dilemma.
As David mentions, DQ is above intellectual quality. Pirsig takes this topic
on in pages 415 to 419 as he revitalizes Pragmatism by reinterpreting it with
the light of the MOQ. He writes:
>>>Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical
experience.>>>>
>>>>The test of the true is the good.>>>>
And good is explicitly defined as
>>>>Direct everyday experience>>>>>
I believe that the correct answer to Rob’s question is that Direct
Experience is not only a higher value, but that knowledge of the MOQ can’t
even come about without being open to this experience. Intellectual experience
and thoughts are just as much a form of Direct Experience as is any other
experience.
To clarify Rob’s question, I believe that a person can not be well versed in
the MOQ in any meaningful way without being open to dynamic experience. A
static, undynamic mind may be familiar with every concept of the MOQ, and not
even be close to becoming one with the concepts.
Let me end with another Pirsigism:
"Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it
is immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress DQ".
Roger
MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
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