From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Aug 06 2004 - 18:24:52 BST
Paul,
> Paul previously said:
> > On the other hand (and I have not denied this throughout the
> dialogue),
> > without society, and biology, and matter, there are no intellectual
> > patterns.
>
> Scott said:
> Why do you (and Pirsig) assume this?
>
> Paul:
> When I assume this, it provides an explanation which is logical, agrees
> with experience, has great explanatory power for such tricky things as
> good and evil, offers a good interpretation of history and conflict,
> and, although I know you disagree, solves the mind-matter problem.
>
> The thing to be aware of, though, is that this is the deduced,
> evolutionary, stratified ontology of the MOQ. The MOQ also takes the
> view that Quality creates intellectual patterns which precede everything
> else, and it is from knowledge (ideas) that ontology is created. This
> can get quite confusing.
I see it as simply contradictory. My point in rejecting the assumption
above (that intellectual patterns depend on social, etc) is precisely to
allow for what you say here: "Quality creates intellectual patterns which
precede everything else, and it is from knowledge (ideas) that ontology is
created". This is in agreement with pre-modern philosophers, that Intellect
comes first, nature second. (By the way, where does the MOQ take this view?
I don't recall it in Lila)
> Paul:
> I think intellect can be understood as effectively a learned behaviour
> and this seems to offer the basis of an explanation for how you can get
> intellect out of non-intellect. "Emergence" isn't really necessary, as
> long as you don't deny that learning is real.
The one does not follow from the other. True, we, as physical beings, learn
to use intellect, in the sense that we have none to speak of as babies, but
later do. But that does not settle the dispute between tabula rasa versus
Plato's recollection scheme. I tend toward the latter.
> Scott said:
> I agree that the container/contained model doesn't work, but I would say
> that the individual should be seen as a localized version of DQ, and not
> just of static patterns, that the DQ that is left after "pouring out" SQ
> is
> a part of the individual, though it would be better to say that a
> (human)
> individual should be seen as a locus of DQ/SQ interaction.
>
> Paul:
> I have made that last statement several times, in the post you are
> responding to, in fact. As for Dynamic Quality being *part of* the
> individual, I would say that this is the equivalent to one's Buddha
> nature which is not part of an individual in the same sense as an
> individual body or a job is. As such, I think you have to be careful
> with such statements.
I don't see it in that post, but I'll take your word that you have said it.
(And I was careful, when I said it is "better to say...:)
>
> Scott said:
> But there is "temporary permanence", one might say, that is, duration.
> If you see a light go on, there had to be some continuity from the state
> before the light went on to the state after, or there wouldn't be any
> noticing of a difference. It is a return to (dualist) SOM to account for
> the continuity by saying that there is a self independent of the change
> in light, but it is also a form of SOM (materialist nominalism) to say
> that the continuity is "postulation".
>
> Paul:
> How so?
By saying that the continuity is "postulation" you are saying that the
continuity only exists as "mere words", as a way we describe the act of
perception after the fact, but which is not really real. This is
nominalism, forced on the materialist due to the assumption that intellect
emerged from non-intellect. I say instead that the continuity is as
necessary to perception as the change (and that they should both be seen as
a polarity: each contradicts the other as each requires the other).
>
> Scott said:
> The irony is that Pirsig had the solution (well, a pointer to it) in
> ZAMM,
> when he said that Quality creates the subject and object in acts of
> perception, but then lost it in LILA when he redefined subject and
> object
> in such a way that it is impossible for the MOQ to account for
> perception.
>
> Paul:
> Quality *is* perception in LILA as it was in ZMM. The bit that people
> struggle with is that the MOQ denies that there must be a perceiver and
> a perceived that can be said to exist separately prior to perception. In
> LILA, this "conceptually unknown" cutting edge of reality becomes
> Dynamic Quality and the perceiver and perceived are created, by
> perception, in the form of static patterns.
Then the MOQ is ok until it says that the perceiver, as well as the
perceived, is created in the form of static patterns. It has to do so
because it tries to live without the subject-object distinction. It is
correct to say that subjects and objects do not exist prior to mental acts
(perception, thinking, willing, feeling), but it is incorrect to put them
both on one side of the formula. This is what idealists and materialists
do, in the attempt to resolve the mind-matter paradox, and the MOQ is doing
the same thing. By doing so it does not solve the paradox, but redefines it
out of sight and mind, by calling the continuity involved in perception
"mere words".
What does solve the paradox (not "solve", actually, but preserves the
mystery as polarity) is to -- to put it in MOQ terms -- consider the
perceiver (or subject) to be DQ, not SQ. (DQ has other names in other
contexts). Thus, Quality *is* perception, as you say, and we, as
perceiver/perceived are DQ/SQ, not just static patterns.
To be sure, the DQ is Buddha nature, but so is the SQ (emptiness is not
other than form, form is not other than emptiness). A consequence of the
MOQ (as uncorrected) is that it leads to anti-intellectual mysticism, that
one is to go beyond intellect to arrive at "pure DQ". Here is a Zen master
who thinks differently (Robert Aitken, "The Morning Star", p. 188 referring
to a talk by Hee-Jin Kim on Dogen):
"Dogen Zenji says, 'Discriminating *is* words and phrases, and words and
phrases *liberate* discriminating thought.' Dr. Kim goes on to say, 'In
other words, the koan language presents the workings of the Buddha Nature.'
"A koan is simply a matter to be made clear, as my betters remind me. The
Tao is not a matter of deliberate frustration and release [as D.T. Suzuki
describes it]. It is a matter of becoming intimate with, say, Mu. Mu
presents the workings of Buddha Nature. It is not a device to force you
into a corner."
By the way, a couple of philosophers I admire (Nicholas of Cusa and
Coleridge) make a distinction between two levels of intellect (or reason).
Unfortunately, they use opposite terms to distinguish them. Coleriedge
calls the lesser type "understanding", while Cusa calls it "discursive
reason" or just "reason" (ratio in Latin). Coleridge calls the greater type
"Reason", and Cusa calls it "understanding" ("intellectus" in Latin). But
they are saying the same thing. To use Coleridge's vocabulary,
"understanding" is what one can grasp in concepts that have ready
referents, in particular, things that are visualizable. "Reason", on the
other hand, is what you need for things (cross out that word) that go
beyond that, for example, Mu in the quote above, or the relation between
continuity and change in acts of perception. I think this is a distinction
that needs to be kept in mind. On the one hand, it does allow for a type of
intellect that the mystic does need to go beyond, but does not deny the
other type that the mystic can achieve (for example, Franklin
Merrell-Wolff, who calls it "introception"). A more ready-to-hand example
of Reason is mathematics, which also goes beyond the visualizable, which is
why one needs it to "understand" quantum mechanics.
- Scott
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Aug 06 2004 - 18:40:19 BST