From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Aug 17 2004 - 11:26:26 BST
Hi Scott
Scott said:
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:
In LILA, the section about the baby jumping through "chains of
deduction" to create objects is one example but it is spelled out more
concisely in LILA'S CHILD and other "post-LILA" Pirsig. This quote from
LILA'S CHILD sums it up:
"Bohr's "observation" and the MOQ's "quality event" are the same, but
the contexts are different. The difference is rooted in the historic
chicken-and-egg controversy over whether matter came first and produces
ideas, or ideas come first and produce what we know as matter. The MOQ
says that Quality comes first, which produces ideas, which produce what
we know as matter. The scientific community that has produced
Complementarity, almost invariably presumes that matter comes first and
produces ideas. However, as if to further the confusion, the MOQ says
that the idea that matter comes first is a high quality idea!" [LILA'S
CHILD Note 67]
The contradiction you find between this and the ordering of the MOQ's
stratified ontology may be resolved when it is understood that
a) In the MOQ, ideas aren't dependent on an experience of physical
reality; they are dependent only on value, therefore
b) unlike those subject-object metaphysics which assume that a
spatio-temporal universe is fundamental to experience and therefore
reality, the MOQ does *not* regard time as fundamental and therefore the
emergence of intellectual patterns from pure experience need not be said
to temporally occur "before" or "after" anything else, therefore
c) the question of "which came first" in an historic, evolutionary sense
is a question that only comes about within the intellectually
constructed context of a spatio-temporal universe, and within that
(static) context the highest quality explanation of evidence (according
to the MOQ) is that physical reality (which is also ultimately a
deduction) *temporally* precedes society and intellect.
Does this help, or have I just added to the confusion?
Scott said:
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.
Paul:
From a Dynamic point of view, all postulates, and hence continuity, are
"mere words." From a static point of view, postulates, and hence
continuity, are "really real." Quality is both Dynamic and static
therefore the MOQ does not reject one reality for the other.
Scott said:
This is nominalism, forced on the materialist due to the assumption that
intellect emerged from non-intellect.
Paul:
If by non-intellect you mean matter, the MOQ is not reductionist and
does not state that intellect emerges from matter, in the sense that
materialists mean it. It says that both inorganic patterns and
intellectual patterns emerge from Quality and that "matter" is an
intellectual pattern used as a basis to explain and predict the
behaviour of inorganic patterns.
"The MOQ never says that the intellectual level is just the inorganic
level in disguise. The only reason the SOM people say that, I think, is
that they are trying to prove that everything is inorganic in order to
satisfy the demands of materialism. But in the MOQ all the levels are
embedded in quality and they don't need to be embedded in each other."
[PIRSIG, ANT MCWATT'S MOQ TEXTBOOK]
This aside, regarding nominalism, I'm not sure if the MOQ is nominalist
or not and if it is, so what? Being an empirical theory, it certainly
doesn't subscribe to a world of Platonic Forms if that is the only
alternative. As I understand it, nominalism refers to the doctrine that
experiences of individual things come first which are subsequently
grouped into universals. The MOQ doesn't start with an experience of
individual things, but with undifferentiated perception, which creates
patterns, including the intellectual patterns which discern objects.
Scott said:
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).
Paul:
Perhaps we may say that "change" may be indicative of Dynamic Quality
and "continuity" may be indicative of static quality, therefore, as you
state, both are aspects of perception despite their apparent
contradiction.
Scott said:
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.
Paul:
Idealism assumes that mind is fundamental reality and puts matter on the
other side of the formula; materialism assumes that matter is
fundamental reality and puts mind on the other side of the formula. The
MOQ assumes that neither is fundamental reality, puts both on one side
of the formula (as you say), and is therefore not doing the same as
idealism or materialism.
Scott said:
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".
Paul:
As above, I think your use of "mere" incorrectly dismisses static
patterns as unreal. As far as I know, the MOQ doesn't regard static
patterns as unreal, it just says they aren't fundamental.
Also, I'm not sure that the assumption that continuity is always
involved in perception is entirely correct, from a Dynamic point of view
at least. I think continuity implies patterns, which makes it part of
the static world; therefore whilst it is real it is not fundamental.
Scott said:
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).
Paul:
I think equating Dynamic Quality with the subject destroys the meaning
of the primary terms employed by the MOQ (a pre-intellectual subject?)
and effectively turns it into another SOM construction of an idealist
flavour.
I think the MOQ preserves the "mystery" in that, from a Dynamic point of
view, subject and object, perceiver and perceived etc. are not distinct
in a way that can be captured conceptually.
Scott said:
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".
Paul:
I don't think this last statement is entirely correct, it only tells
half the story. As I understand it, the MOQ says that although Dynamic
Quality (emptiness) and static quality (form) are apparently
contradictory they are both necessary perspectives of Quality.
"That's the whole thing: to obtain static and Dynamic Quality
*simultaneously*." [LILA Ch 17]
Thus, following a Zen Buddhist approach, intellect is not to be rejected
but to be understood in a larger context, as a consequence of "360
degree enlightenment." In his letter to me regarding intellect, Pirsig
wrote:
"From a Zen viewpoint [intellect] is a part of the world of everyday
affairs that one leaves behind upon becoming enlightened and then
rediscovers from a Buddha's point of view."
I'll finish this post here but will come back to the notes on Coleridge
later.
Regards
Paul
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