Hello everyone
David, thank you for your very informative reply to my last email.
I will try and address a very difficult problem here...one that I have been
wrestling with for some time now only to see that there is no problem at
all. We
are complicating things much more than need be. Let me start with Walter's
post of 3/16/99...
Walter:
The types mentioned are Formative DQ and Contributive DQ, representing the
Universal perspective
of DQ and the Human perspective of DQ (experience).
Glove:
I cannot help but feel that there is something wrong with this prospective
of universal and human experience from the Metaphysics of Quality
standpoint. If we assume there is a universal prospective, we must also
assume that it exists as an independently existing "something", perhaps like
an object "out there" that experiences quite independently from the
subjective "us" as humans. Isn't this just a continuation of subject/object
metaphysics? Seems so to me...
David:
I think your explaination of the quality event is a confusion of
cosmology and epistemology. As Walter put it, "Now I see more clearly
than ever that my struggle with DQ is mainly based on the difference in
these two perspectives", which he calls the "universal" and the "human"
perspectives.
Glove:
I can certainly see your point here, David. I wrote the above reply to
Walter before I read your reply to my email of 3/16/99 but I think it
answers your objections very nicely as well. The notion of an independently
existing reality apart from our own experience is the essence of
subject-object thinking, in my opinion, and is also a link-pin between
Pirsig's
Metaphysics of Quality and Bohr's complementarity. Neither philosophy
subscribes to an independently existing reality apart from experience. Once
this is realized, the division between cosmology and epistemology breaks
down as well.
[David Buchanan] I almost agree with your claim that "The
Quality Event is the measured phenomenal object...". But I think its
more accurate to say the Quality Event creates the phenomeanl object.
Quality Events create all static patterns, at all the levels, all the
time. There's a big sale 'cause we're over-stocked. But the rest of
what you say here mixes the cosmological and epistemological issues.
Maybe you'll comb thru it again and see what I mean.
Glove:
The Quality Event is a complete event, much like Bohr's framework of
complementarity is a complete theory of cognition. The philosophy of Bohr
was, and still is, largely ignored in light of the success complementarity
has had in explaining the atomic system. Bohr realized that in order to
explain what was occurring at the atomic level, everyday descriptions of
reality were essential. His framework of complementarity reflects this in
that what is termed "universal cosmology" must be completely ignored in
order to allow unambiguous communication to arise. The latter part of
Pirsig's SODV paper was devoted to understanding Bohr's insistence on this
matter, but I sense that Pirsig himself was not satisfied with his own
conclusions, as he mentions that Bohr probably would not have approved of
his diagram depicting the Conceptually Unknown with the dotted circle
surrounding the observation. I agree that he would not have approved.
Pirsig says that Dynamic Quality is pure experience, the cutting edge of
experience, a feeling rather than an actual "something" that we can put
boundaries around and conceptualize. He uses several analogies...the hot
stove, music, Victorian morality...to get his point across, but as analogies
are merely what-ifs, they are easily misunderstood if not looked at from the
proper angle, as I can see with my own cup analogy, which I will come back
to directly.
You say "I think its more accurate to say the Quality Event creates the
phenomenal object." From the usual way we view reality, I would agree with
you, and this is probably why Bohr's framework of complementarity is so
little understood, even today, over 70 years after he advanced it. From the
Metaphysics of Quality point of view, however, the phenomenal object and the
Quality Event are one and the same. Let me explain this a little further.
In our everyday reality, there is nothing that we cannot account for,
absolutely nothing! The very foundation of all our sciences are based on
this fact. Our everyday reality is a complete reality. Bohr recognized this
and used this concept in developing his framework of complementarity to be
applied to the atomic system, where it appeared that there WAS something
going on that we could not account for. In doing so however, he realized
that that which was not being observed must be ignored completely, and in
fact, that is the very way in which we deal with our everyday reality, all
the time.
My cup analogy was an admittedly weak attempt at showing this. I used a cup
because I happened to be drinking my morning coffee and cup struck me as a
good way of illustrating this way we have of conceptually organizing our
reality, knowing that which we know to be and ignoring that which we cannot
agree with. If we take cup as the Quality Event, cup is complete. Even
though I might drink coffee this morning from cup and tea this afternoon,
cup is still cup and I know it for cup by the agreements I have formed with
its cup-ness. Nothing can be added to cup in its completeness, much like
nothing can be added to the Quality Event nor to the framework of
complementarity. They are complete in themselves. Pirsig wrote:
"There's a principle in physics that if a thing can't be distinguished from
anything else it doesn't exist. To this the Metaphysics of Quality adds a
second principle: if a thing has no value it isn't distinguished from
anything else. Then, putting the two together, A THING THAT HAS NO VALUE
DOESN'T EXIST."
This is exactly what Bohr was pointing out with his framework of
complementarity. That which lies outside the observation/Quality Event has
no value and therefore does not exist! The problem then becomes how to
reconcile Dynamic Quality, which lies outside the Quality Event of our
lives. Simply put, Dynamic Quality does not exist, nor does universal
cosmology. Going further now, it will be seen that the Quality Event itself
does not exist except in the ordering of the self and the ordering of the
world as self agrees it should be ordered. The universe has no order other
than what the phenomenal self agrees it has. This is where value arises,
from the phenomenal self, and not outside the self from an independently
existing reality.
David, I hope this helps you to see where I am coming from, and I will look
forward to your reply, or anyone else who is interested in the discussion.
Best wishes,
Glove
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