Hello everyone
Rich Pretti wrote:
>I have a couple of questions (per usual)...
>
>1) Quality is equated with "pure", immediate experience many times.
> This, among other things it is said to be the essence of.
> Do you agree that the formula:
>
> Quality = Experience
>
> is correct? If so, then it follows that Reality is composed of
> undefinable yet undeniable Quality experience.
>
> a) Or should that be undeniable experience OF Quality?
>
> I don't think so, not if the equation of Quality with Experience
> is direct and literal. This I think is where we go beyond a
>primary subject/object distinction, which would hold that an "I"
"had"
>an experience "of" Quality. Rather, we say per the MOQ that the Quality WAS
>the experience. By saying that Q = E, I do not, however think we can
>deny the possibility (or preference) of Q equaling other things as
>well. Here I see the One being manifest as the Many, or Being
>(Quality) and Becoming (Experience), "being", in "reality" the
>same thing.
>
> b) Where Q = Quality, E = Experience, D = Dynamic & s = static,
> If Q = E, and Q = DQ & sq, then does E = DE & se?
>
> It makes sense to me. Pirsig's example of the good, new song on
> the radio is clearly a Dynamic Experience. A -good- Dynamic
> experience, for it could also be poor. "static quality is what
> you normally expect", we are told. Repetitive, stale experience.
> When I think about it, our entire lives are lived in ways that
> may be understood as stable patterns of value. These patterns,
> while comfortable and necessary for the continuation of life,
> grow dull, old, stale. That is, the Experience ( = Quality
>Event) has become of lower value. But still it, like all, _is_
>Quality.
Glove:
Hi Rich
All subject/object experience is static quality. Pirsig writes: "The
Metaphysics of Quality says as long as the psychiatric approach is encased
within a subject-object metaphysical understanding it will always seek a
patterned solution to insanity, never a mystic one." (pg 427 teal paperback)
I would say that this thought can be extended into perception in general. As
long as perception is encased within subject-object metaphysical
understanding it will always seek a patterned solution, or in other words,
turn Dynamic Quality into recognizable static quality, and never seek a
mystic solution, an unpatterned, Dynamic "something".
This is one of the little things that has always bothered me about Bodvar's
subject/object-thinking-as-the-Quality-intellect. Subject/object thinking is
not the highest value way of thinking... quantum theory/philosophy has
basically done away with the classical notion of subject and object, and
this is applicable to the MOQ as well.
>Rich:
>
>2) In SODV, Pirsig states very clearly, as done in ZMM, that the
> "world is composed of three things - Quality, mind and matter."
> Elsewhere, he distinctly makes the point that empiricists have
> never solved the problem of values (ethics), because their
> metaphysics has been of the subject/object type. "They keep trying
> to assign values to subjects or objects. It can't be done.
> VALUES ARE A SEPARATE CATEGORY ALL THEIR OWN."
>
> In Lila, he just as succintly tells us that subjects and objects
> are best understood as PATTERNS OF I,B,S&I VALUE."
>
> So we have this:
>
>a: M(atter) is not equal to V(alue)
> M(ind) is not equal to V(alue)
> Quality is not equal to Mind or Matter
>
>b: M(atter) is equal to I & B (PO) V's
> M(ind) is equal to S & I (PO) V's
> Quality is equal to Mind and Matter (with evolved split)
Glove:
Could we then say that mind-matter is equal to value?
>Rich:
> I ask, how do we reconcile "a" to "b"?
Glove:
I am not entirely sure we have to reconcile a to b. Pirsig writes: "There
isn't any "man" independent of the patterns. Man is the patterns... In a
value centered Metaphysics of Quality the four sets of static patterns are
not isolated into separate compartments of mind and matter. Matter is just a
name for certain inorganic value patterns. Biological patterns, social
patterns, and intellectual patterns are supported by this pattern of matter
but are independent of it." (pg 178 teal paperback)
Aside from the inconsistency of Lila and Pirsig's SOVD paper concerning the
four sets of patterns and what they apply to in a mind/matter split, there
is the problem of "man" not being independent of patterns of value, yet the
patterns of value being independent of each other. Pirsig goes on to say:
"The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links
between these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two terms
are missing: biology and society... Our intellectual description of nature
is always culturally derived... Science and reason, this myth goes, come
only from the objective world, never from the social world. The world of
objects imposes itself upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever. "
(pg. 179, teal paperback)
When we bring the social level into the equation, we see how a & b are
residual subject-object thinking left over in the MOQ. I would also say that
is why there is a conflict between Lila and the SOVD paper concerning the
four levels... Pirsig's paper was designed to be given in front of a group
of people who probably had not read Lila and were completely encased in
subject-object thinking. Therefore Pirsig had to fudge things just a bit to
allow them the chance to form static latches with his MOQ in as short of
time as possible.
>Rich:
> One suggestion is this: what if Quality is not equal to Value?
>
> How does all this reconcile with experience? Value (social and
> intellectual patterns - Mind/Subject) becomes aware of Value
>(inorganic and biological patterns - Matter/Object) at the
> Quality Event. Could we say that any "Value" (i.e. - pattern),
>"experiences" Quality through interaction with one or more
> different Values?
Glove:
Man is the patterns. The MOQ seems to state that value does not become aware
of value at the Quality Event, rather value IS the Quality Event. Experience
is awareness. Without awareness there is no experience, no value. Therefore
we cannot say that any value experiences Quality through interaction with
one or more different values. Experience comes first. Awareness comes first.
The interaction takes place after intellectual awareness, not before, as is
the way we classically think of experience occurring.
>Rich:
>3) Does Quality = Dynamic Quality ("really") and leave static
> patterns of value as something, even though springing from,
> _different_, _metaphysically distinct/discrete_ from Quality
> itself?
Glove:
Only in the context of our conceptual agreements with each other.
>Rich:
> If so, doesn't this then split Quality itself? Isn't this bad?
Glove:
Need we anyone to tell us what is bad?
>Rich:
> In response to those offering up spov's as "Illusion", "Maya",
> "Samsara", etc... how do you reconcile this with the example of
> Phaedrus leaving India when his teacher explained _again_ that
> the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima fall under this
> category?
Glove:
I don't believe Pirsig understood what his teacher was trying to get across
to him at the time. His teacher seemed to be trying to show him that what we
normally think of as the external world does not come first. Pirsig was
unable to reconcile this with the horror of atomic warfare. It is indeed
overwhelmingly descriptive of a true external reality when we see horrors
unfold around us, seemingly independent from us. What we do not stop to
consider is that these horrors only occur when we become aware of them
occurring. This is what Pirsig's Indian teacher seemed to be attempting to
get across to him.
>
>Gotta Fly.
Don't let your arms get tired... coast when you can. :)
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