ROGER CONTINUES HIS LAST RESPONSE ON THE DYNAMIC/STATIC SPLIT
John,
I too am interested in delving deeper into this issue. Sorry for
misrepresenting you, I feared as much.
John:
> I agree with Pirsig that quality is
> encountered in the
>experience, in the here and now moment, and in that sense is prior to any
>division into
>subjects and objects.
Would you go so far as to agree that "Quality is the experience"?
> Now I am not arguing with the proposition that
> my encounter with
> quality occurs in immediate experience,
Would you agree that "you" are derived from the encounter?
> When a
> society attributes
> quality to an object or artifact, it is code for saying that suitably
> defined persons will tend to
> agree that there is something 'good' about it. When Pirsig says we all
> recognise quality when
> we see it, it is this shared assumption that I take it he is pointing to.
I
> think he is wrong, (in
> that we tend to disagree monumentally), but it still seems to me that in
> coining the term 'static
> quality' he is trying to preserve this usage.
I see him as saying something quite different. I think he is stating that we
recognize quality beyond any objective or subjective constraints. When I hear
a song and hate it today, and then hear and find quality in it tomorrow,
what has changed? I say that the experience has changed and that has created
a new song and a new listener. I see Pirsig as pointing that we all can
perceive quality, not that there is some common agreement with "suitably
defined persons". (Though I don't think Pirsig would necessarily disagree
with your statement, I just don't think this is what your interpretation of
"we all can recognize it when we see it " means) I again fear I am
misrepresenting you though.....
> I contrast this with his use of quality to refer to the pre-intellectual
> character of our
> experience, for here quality seems quite clearly NOT to equate to 'good'.
It
> makes good
> sense to me to use biological and evolutionary language in exploring this
> version of quality,
> as Pirsig did quite directly in 'Zen'. ("Quality is the response of an
> organism to its
> environment." Ch 20)
Bodvar took me to task for using this same type of language the post he sent
the same day as yours. Read his input and my response, which is pretty close
to what you and I were discussing at the beginning of the month about
intellect preceding the other levels. In fact you were then correcting me
for attributing static intellect as emerging out of static society and
biology. Thinking is the experience that creates all the levels, and the
thinker to boot. In this light, it is the same Quality.
> I think he
> combines a profound insight and a very slippery evasion of the
difficulties
>this creates for his
> system in the next few pages, where in saying that Quality is an event, he
> makes a jump to
> the statement "The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects"
> as the culmination
> of his thought. Had he said something like "The quality in an event is
> fundamental and prior
> to any division into subject and object", I could happily concur. But the
> word 'cause' is a
> loaded one, and I would want to ask how he understands that. When he
returns
> to this issue
> in Ch20 he says "he didn't mean it to be mysterious. He simply meant that
at
> the cutting edge
> of time, before an object can be distinguished, there must be a kind of
> nonintellectual
> awareness, which he called awareness of Quality." Again I can agree with
him.
> I think the
> reason he used 'cause' earlier was to neutralise his concern that quality
> could be divided into
> different types. I think he fails, and I am very interested to explore
what
> I believe are a
> number of varieties of quality which we experience. It seems to me Pirsig
> sensed how
> fundamental this issue was, but rather than deal with it he evaded it
under
> the smokescreen
> of causality.
But why is it an evasion? What if he said "created" rather than "caused",
would you still take exception? Help me understand your trouble with this
concept.
> I have read a lot on 'consciousness', and have yet to find
> any satisfying
> insight about the fundamental strangeness of it.
I think Pirsig thinks it too is a ghost.
> I have just read an article in New
> Scientist (13th March 99) on the
> same topic, entitled "Meme, Myself, I" which I thought very witty. I think
> Blackmore is very
> relevant but perhaps overstates her case. I look forward to your next
volume
> on her book.
I agree she overstates her case in many places. In the next volume I hope to
share her concepts on consciousness (which I don't think she overstates). Her
ideas here dovetail Pirsig's.
Roger
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