From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Aug 17 2004 - 11:26:21 BST
Hi Platt
That reply I promised.
Platt said:
I've looked through LILA and can't find where Pirsig made it clear that
"perception" as used in the MOQ means something different than its
everyday SOM meaning. Same goes for "experience" and "awareness."
Paul:
As far as I am aware, a SOM sees neither that Quality is synonymous with
awareness, nor that this Quality awareness is the source of all subjects
and objects. Rather, a SOM sees a subject and/or an object as the source
of awareness. In terms of the texts, does this quote from ZMM answer
your question?:
"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...Since all intellectually
identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality,
Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects." [ZMM,
p.247, Ch 20]
Or this from LILA?:
"The low value that can be derived from sitting on a hot stove is
obviously an experience even though it is not an object and even though
it is not subjective. The low value comes first, then the subjective
thoughts that include such things as stove and heat and pain come
second." [LILA Ch 8]
Platt said:
I can't find a single instance in LILA where Pirsig, in explaining the
MOQ, divorces perception (awareness, experience) from a subjective human
being.
Paul:
Does the LILA quote above address this? Metaphysically speaking, the
subjective human being comes after the value experience. Also, within
the MOQ it is assumed that experience occurs at the inorganic level
without the presence of subjective human beings, if it didn't, evolution
wouldn't have gotten started.
Platt said:
In fact, in the LS, Note 59, Pirsig states flatly, "The MOQ, like
science, starts with human experience." Once you bring in a human, you
bring in a subject, at least in the common definition of the word,
"subject."
Paul:
I think you've taken that quote out of context. The full quote reads:
"Within the MOQ, the idea that static patterns of value start with the
inorganic level is considered to be a good idea. But the MOQ itself
doesn't start before sentience. The MOQ, like science, starts with human
experience.
Remember the early talk in ZMM about Newton's Law of Gravity? Scientific
laws without people to write them are a scientific impossibility."
He is refuting to the statement that, "The static patterns of value
start with the inorganic level. This implies that the MOQ existed before
sentience." I don't think this has anything to do with my denial that
subjects and objects are the starting point of reality in both SOM and
the MOQ.
> Platt said:
> Further, Pirsig says we can never know ultimate reality (the
> conceptually unknown). But that's saying we know something about it.
>
> Paul:
> We can't know it *intellectually* but we can intellectually accept
that it
> exists nonetheless and work from there. We *can* know it by
experience,
> given that it *is* experience. Again, I thought this was made clear in
ZMM
> and LILA.
Platt said:
Again, where in these books was it "made clear?" A couple of quotes
would help.
Paul:
That it is known by experience:
"Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without
definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience
independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions." [LILA Ch 5]
That you cannot see that this can be "intellectually accepted" and used
in a rational system may be a case of "not seeing the wood for the
trees." As I read it, LILA is *all about* how the inclusion of an
indefinite, conceptually unknown aspect of reality provides a new
dimension of explanatory capability. Almost every topic is centred on
it: the brujo, mysticism, insanity, free markets, contrarians,
evolution...
"But what the socialists left out and what has all but killed their
whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite Dynamic
Quality."
"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the
door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed
it because the metaphysical structure of objectivity never told them
Dynamic Quality exists."
"It seemed that when you add a concept of "Dynamic Quality" to a
rational understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an
understanding of contrarians."
"It seems clear that no mechanistic pattern exists toward which life is
heading, but has the question been taken up of whether life is heading
away from mechanistic patterns?" He guessed that the question had not
been taken up at all. The concepts necessary for taking it up were not
at hand....The decisions that directed the progress of evolution are, in
fact, Dynamic Quality itself."
"Once this theoretical structure is available, it offers solutions to
some mysteries in the present treatment of the insane. For example,
doctors know that shock treatment "works," but are fond of saying that
no one knows why.
The Metaphysics of Quality offers an explanation. The value of shock
treatment is not that it returns a lunatic to normal cultural patterns.
It certainly does not do that. Its value is that it destroys all
patterns, both cultural and private, and leaves the patient temporarily
in a Dynamic state."
Does this suffice? I haven't the time to copy out every quote.
Regards
Paul
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