ROGER ACCEPTS DAVID'S SUGGESTION THAT I
ADDRESS HIS QUOTES DIRECTLY
DAVID B. WROTE:
First I have to confess a little frustration. I'm grateful that you take
the time to reply directly, but it seems you've been sailing right past
main points. It seems that you ignored all the Pirsig quotes I dug up
and provided. Am I being unclear in my posts? Maybe you'll do me a favor
and indulge me in a little of that "I hear what you're saying when
you..." kind of treatment. I realize that you're not my therapist or
anything, but the feeling that no one is listening is really starting to
bug me. Perhaps I ask for too much?
ROGER:
Yeah, I know the feeling. I think what I hear you saying is that the MOQ's
conceptual models are models of REALITY. I say that Pirsig has explained that
reality is the preconceptual flux of experience. The MOQ is a model of sq, of
conceptual patterns derived from experience.
Allow me to take your quotes head on......
DAVID B. WROTE:
>"The value of shock treatment (according to the MOQ) is that it destroys
>all patterns, both cultural and private, and leaves the patient
>temporarily in a Dynamic state."
ROGER:
All experience is DQ, including the shock treatment. Experiences like
massive shocks and near death are not more "DQish", they are just beyond our
static models. We are unable to filter them and objectify them as well.
DAVID:
>And please notice that it isn't hurricanes, hearth attacks of electro
>shock therapy that is itself Dynamic, it is that this extra-ordinary
>events can leave us "temorarily in a Dynamic state."
ROGER:
Just as the baby is in a dynamic, unfiltered phase until it can build
deductive subject/object patterns.
DAVID:
>PAGE 373 "The MOQ identifies religious mysticism with Dynamic
>Quality...The mystic has abandoned all static patterns in favor of DQ."
ROGER:
This is very difficult to do. This is what I was trying to describe I
attempt to do in my daily life on the LS. (Though not to a mystic
level...just mystic wanna-be)
DAVID:
>PAGE 149 "...static patterns of value are divided into four systems:
>inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social paterns and intellectual
>patterns. They are exhaustive. That's all there are. If you construct an
>encyclopedia of four topics - Inorganic, Biological, Social and
>Intellectual - nothing is left out. No "things" that is. Only Dynamic
>Quality, which cannot be described in any encyclopedia, is absent."
ROGER:
Here Pirsig gives the 4 groupings of conceptual patterns. This world of words
and concepts and subjects and objects is not the flux of reality known as DQ.
It is often confused with the reality it attempts to describe though.
DAVID:
>PAGE 155 "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. Mental patterns do not
>originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which
>originates out of biology which originates out of inorganic nature. And,
>as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by
>social patterns as social patterns are dominated by biological patterns
>and as biological patterns are dominated by inorganic patterns. There is
>no direct scientific connection between mind and matter. As the atomic
>physicist, Niels Bohr said, "We are suspended in language." Our
>intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived."
ROGER:
The conceptual model is intertwined as such. Again, don't confuse this with
REALITY though.
DAVID:
The following ideas were expressed by Pirsig in his lecture SODV. I
re-read it with our debate in mind. I was looking for specific answers
about...well, about reality and observation. I'm just going to put the
out there as way to ask you about the one disagreement I can't seem to
let go of. Hopefully you've noticed the main idea I've been trying to
get across, even if you don't agree with it or understand exactly. These
quotes get at the issue pretty directly. You know, the intellect is
mediated through all the previous levels and so percieves reality
indirectly, as opposed to mystical experience or DQ.
ROGER:
The conceptual model is indeed built just as you describe. Intellectual
patterns are mediated through the levels just as you say. I will add though
that this mediation explains the filtering of thoughts , but the "dynamic
edge' of thinking is a form of pure experience. To quote RMP': "The ongoing
Dynamic edge of all experience, both positive and negative, even the dynamic
edge of thought itself."
DAVID:
These quotes get at the issue pretty directly..... It gets at this
issue of what static patterns are; conceptualizations and abstractions
or are they the world? This is where we disagree. The first cut is the
deepest and all that.
"We no longer need to claim that we ourselves alter scientific reality
when we look at it and know about it - a claim that Einstein regarded as
part of a "shaky game"."
"The MOQ says objects are composed of "Substance" but it says that this
substance can be defined more precisely as "stable inorganic patterns of
value". The objects look and smell and feel the same either way. The MOQ
agrees with scientific realism that these inorganic patterns are
completely real, but it says that this reality is ultimatley a deduction
made in the first months of an infant's life and supported by culture in
which the infant grows up... Bohr is sometimes mistakenly thought to say
that thsi inorganic level does not exist. He does not deny this
inorganic reality. He simply says that the properties the physicist
describes cannot be said to reside at this level."
ROGER:
Allow me to quote Dr. Heisenberg:
"For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the
ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or -- in Plato's sense
-- Ideas." They are mental constructs, and even as such are inadequate
explanations of even the shadows of true REALITY without complementary
definitions.
Or Sir Arthur Eddington:
"We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods
of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world
of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadopted for penetrating."
Or Erwin Schroedinger:
"The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It
gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experiences in a
magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent all and sundry that
is near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word
about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it
knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.......
So, in brief, WE DO NOT BELONG TO THIS MATERIAL WORLD THAT SCIENCE CONSTRUCTS
FOR US." (emphasis added)
These three quotes are from my post at the beginning of the month. None of
these scientists is 100% in tune with the MOQ (though Schroedinger is real
close), but they all recognize that the flux of reality is not the reality of
the models we have constructed. Our models, EVEN THE MOQ, are inadequate at
explaining Direct Experience. I see my view as completely in agreement with
your excellent SODV quote. Don't you David?
DAVID [Quoting Pirsig]:
"A third piece of evidence that reveals the similarity betweem the MOQ
and Complementarity occurs when Bohr says, "We are suspended in
language," the MOQ completely agrees. In the MOQ we see that each higher
level of evolution rests on and is supported by the next lower level of
evolution and cannot do without it. There is no intellect that can
independently reach and make contact with inorganic patterns. It must go
through both society and biology to reach them. In the past science has
insisted on the necessity of biological proofs, that is, proofs in terms
of sense data, and it has tried to discard social patterns as a source
of scientific knowledge. When Bohr says we are suspended in language I
think he means you cannot get rid of the social contexts either."
ROGER:
Yes, intellectual patterns emerge out of social patterns, etc. But the
entire concept of patterns is an intellectual construction itself.
To quote RMP, "the intellectual pattern that says
"there is an external world of things out there which are
independent of intellectual patterns".
That is one of the highest quality intellectual patterns
there is. And in this highest quality intellectual
pattern, external objects appear historically before
intellectual patterns...
But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself comes
before the external world, not after, as is commonly
presumed by the materialists."
Cutting through it all, Reality is Direct Experience. The MOQ and other
conceptual models of reality are interwoven models of sq. Pirsig addresses
this limitation of models, but also recognizes their benefits. The
filtering or static latching of experience is necessary to evolve or reach
goals. However, the path of biology, society and intellect that has formed
us also brings us down a road of limited choices. Each level is freer and
more dynamic in terms of potential experience than its predecesser, but the
choices are still limited. (Just try to experience as a bat, or even as a
female, or as a Frenchman, Dave).
Are we all in total agreement yet? When can we try to recap our consensus?
Thank you for the wonderful dialogue.
Rog
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