Hello everyone
Dave Thomas writes:
>>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
Glove:
Hi Dave
My question stems from my interest in Niels Bohr's framework of
complementarity and how it correlates with Robert Pirsig's Metaphysics of
Quality. As you said in an earlier email, part of the confusion with the MOQ
is Pirsig's evolving thoughts over the years. In his SODV paper he admits he
had little knowledge of Bohr's framework of complementarity when he wrote
Lila and it seems that his later correspondence reflects this when he
answered Ant's comment:
In the second paragraph of his March 1997 paper
"Quality", Ant wrote the following:
"Fundamentally Pirsig's term (Quality) is a mystic one, and
refers to the undifferentiated, indeterminate, reality from
which the universe has evolved (or grown) from."
On March 29th 1997 Pirsig wrote to Anthony with the
following comment about the above statement:
"Although this is true at a Buddha's level of understanding
it would be confusing and illogical in the world of
everyday affairs to say that the world is evolving both
from and toward the same thing. I have had some reader
mail that has pointed out that at one place I seem to imply
that Quality and chaos are the same and at another that
they are different, so I haven't been clear on this myself
and have left an opening to attack. To close it up, let us
say that the universe is evolving from a condition of low
quality (quantum forces only, no atoms, pre-big bang)
toward a higher one (birds trees societies and thoughts)
and that in a static sense (world of everyday affairs)
these two are not the same." (from Ant's LS email - in nothingness there is
a great working)
This correspondence seems to suggest there are two points of view that
Pirsig uses and that these views are not the same, by which I take to mean
they cannot be used simultaneously. Since this letter was written after
Lila, it suggests to me that Pirsig's thoughts have evolved more fully and
that he is attempting to resolve some of the ambiguities in Lila by putting
concepts of the framework of complementarity into action.
Dave:
>
>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.
Glove:
I am not arguing that we do not use the two notions simultaneously in every
day static quality reality. We most definitely do. What I am asking is
whether it is proper, from a larger MOQ point of view, to continue doing so.
Things change = static quality Dynamic Quality. This is how we normally view
our reality and I believe this is the gist of your above paragraph. But this
is not quite right.
Dynamic Quality is not just change. It is more like change for the "better",
although that's not quite right either. Often times I have found that it is
the seemingly inconsequential, unlooked for irrelevancies that signal
something Dynamic, although that Dynamic something itself is never apparent
except in retrospection. Dynamic Quality is undefined, unbounded "something"
but it is also what makes one leap off a hot stove at a 90 degree angle.
Sliding off the stove at a 180 degree angle is not the "best" way to get off
the stove (and that would also be a change, would it not?) but how does the
body know that, and without considering the matter at all, instead "just"
leaps perpendicularly off the stove at 90 degrees?
This is very complex and I need time to ponder upon the ramifications. Any
thoughts are appreciated.
>Dave:
>
>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?
Glove:
I would love to just drop the whole inquiry into the simultaneous use of DQ
and sq, believe me. The question doesn't seem to want to let me go, however.
I think sometimes all that I am doing is confusing the issues that have
already been resolved satisfactorily to everyones agreement but my own.
Perhaps it is only my own controlled folly that is bothering me. :)
Best wishes,
glove
>
>Dave Thomas
>
>
>MOQ Homepage - http://www.moq.org
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>
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