Glove
> The question I am wrestling with is whether static quality and Dynamic
> Quality can be USED in a SIMULTANEOUS fashion? Static latching would seem to
> be the mechanism by which Pirsig unites the two in the Metaphysics of
> Quality, but if the four static quality levels are exhaustive and contain
> everything we know, are we not precluded from acknowledging Dynamic Quality
> altogether? I believe the answer is that this is Pirsig's controlled folly.
[Dave]
For me the operative words in your first question are USED and
SIMULTANEOUS.The easier of the two to address is simultaneous.Let's start with
this RP quote.
"She's a cohesion of CHANGING static patterns of Quality. ...in the middle of
this "Lila Jungle" are ancient prehistoric ruins of past civilizations. You
could dig into those ruins..[and] find out what her values were..[but it]
sounded wrong..too contrived..too objective.. It ignored the whole Dynamic
aspect. There is always this open end of Dynamic indeterminacy." Lila: P138/39
CHANGING static patterns: What's causing this change? Dynamic Quality,
simutaneously and continuously. When I first started discussing MoQ on LS a
couple of years ago I tried to make the case for static patterns changing
static patterns via static quality events. Which at first blush seemed to make
sense. The static patterns that are you, reads the static patterns of the book
"Lila", and over the course of that event the static patterns that are "you"
changes. But not all
the static patterns that are you change (your height,hair color etc remained
static) but changes were occuring during the reading event. So while some
static patterns are changing others remain unchanged. Because a change was
taking place I came to the conclusion that dynamic was a better way to
characterize it. So as my fingers dynamically, Elton John acrossed this
keyboard, any change that is taking place is DQ all the rest is SQ.
Simultaneous SQ & DQ, everyday, all the time.
What switched me to assigning all significant change to DQ was the
indetermancy of the
change. Could you have predicted when you read Lila that you would now be
seriously discussing its' philosophy over the Internet? Could I? What about
the "x" million other people who read it and stuck it on the shelf? So it was
the indetermancy of what will latch that led me to see that Dyamic Quality was
a much better description for the source of change. And as quantum physics has
indicated this indetermancy extends all the way to the subatomic level.
As I indicated above USED is a much harder question. Restated I think you're
asking: Can one develop ways:
1.To knowingly access Dynamic Quality? Probably
2 Control the latching process to static patterns? Possibly
3.Predict the consequences of the newly latched patterns? Once in a while.
On to your question: "are we not precluded from acknowledging Dynamic Quality
altogether?" No, and here the pragmatic tradition may help.
"There is the materialist school that says reality is all matter, which
creates mind. There is the idealist school that says its all mind, which
creates matter. There is the positivist school which says this argument could
go on forvever; drop the subject." Lila P 153
The pragmatists say don't "drop the subject" or stick to either extreme, but
rather promote a course of action (Peirce) [that is a] "self correcting social
and communal process promoting..beliefs, upset..by doubts, and whose sole end
is "the settlement of opinion"..[and that these actions](James) "..rests upon three
basic assumptions; first that reconcilation is possible between the two
extremes; second, that this reconcilation can be arrived at in and amiable
manner; and third, that this amiable reconciliation will be better that either extreme"
We have this large class of questions to which ready answers have not been
forthcoming, we know not how or why certain things happen, but they do. Let's
all agree to call it something, agree on how it works, and then,subject to
revision. act as though those agreements are real. Bob says; "Dynamic
Quality" and this is how it could works. I vote for it, how about you?
Dave Thomas
MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
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