From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 30 2005 - 01:55:08 GMT
Sam, Scott, Paul and all MOQians:
Sam Norton asked:
"Is Pirsig doing something different with "experience" than the Western
empirical tradition?" "...In other words, is Pirsig still using 'value' in
the way that James used 'experience' (and the various people before James
but after Locke). I suspect he does - but I need to think more about it to
show how."
dmb replies:
It seems pretty clear that Pirsig thinks he is doing something different. I
would also suggest that he has not just re-described experience, but is
instead asserting an entirely different idea. For example, Kant's noumenon
is an unknowable thing, a pre-existing external reality that we can never
experience. By contrast, Pirsig's DQ is knowable, is not a thing, is not
external and it is the very first thing we know. As Paul put it, "Kant
maintains that pre-intellectual reality is something we cannot experience.
DQ *is* nothing other than experience." These two concepts are so completely
different that no translation is even possible, much less equating them...
Scott said:
The MOQ claim that DQ is "pre-intellectual" is a Kantian pattern.
So in this means of getting back into touch with reality, it also
reinforces the Kantian duality between the conceptual and reality. As
James, and most philosophies of mysticism have done since Kant.
Paul replied:
In the MOQ, the distinction is between conceptualised reality (forms)
and non-conceptualised reality (formlessness).
dmb says:
Zackly. The static/Dynamic split is between two kinds of experience, two
orders of experience. They are both real and knowable, but they are known in
distinctly different ways, conceptually and non-conceptually, through static
interpretations or directly. As Paul's question to Pirsig shows In the MOQ,
experience is both Dynamic Quality and static quality, but "experience" is
"an SOM word that implies an experiencer and thing experienced, so it's not
the best word to use within the MOQ." Likewise, In LILA's Child he says,
"the trouble is with the word, 'experience.' It is...commonly used as a
subject-object relationship. This relationship is usually considered the
basis of philosophic empiricism and experimental scientific knowledge. In a
subject-object metaphysics, this experience is between a preexisting object
and subject, but in the MOQ, there is no pre-existing subject or object."
Let me put it this way. Our debate here centers around the words
'appearance' and 'reality'. The trouble is that they both have two meanings.
(At least) In the Modern West appearance is what we know with the senses,
Kant's phenomenon, the egos impressions or whatever. In the East it means
maya or illusion. But as Paul points out, this is not to say that these
appearances are unreal. Nor does it mean they are a fake version of the real
thing. In the MOQ, this is the static world, the conceptual world we
experience everyday. These 'appearances' are illusory ONLY insofar as its
taken to be the ONLY kind of reality, the only kind of experience.
Pirsig comments in the Copleston annotations:
"The word "appearance" seems to suggest these static patterns are unreal.
The MOQ does not make this suggestion." AND "Appearance" is a poor word for
reality."
dmb continues:
If appearance IS reality, then there is no metaphysical gulf, no ontological
split between them. The appearance reality distinction rests on the general
notion that we, as subjective minds are struggling to know some other realm
outside of ourselves, some reality that we only have limited access to if we
have any at all. Pirsig asserts NONE of that. Experience is reality.
Appearances (static patterns) are reality. They are only illusiory to the
extent the we insist they are the ONLY reality, as SOM does.
"The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It
claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by
thinking what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity of any
knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely
theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion,
and metaphysics as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this
by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism
are verifiable and that in the past have been excluded for metaphysical
reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the
metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects and
objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object
isn't real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is
just an assumption."
Thanks,
dmb
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