From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Tue May 24 2005 - 16:31:32 BST
Mike,
First, a warning that I am more of a MOQ dissenter than a MOQist, so don't assume that what I say is an interpretation of Pirsig. It's more of a counter metaphysics.
In my view, Pirsig's division into DQ and SQ is too simple, in part for the point you made in an earlier post that the dynamic is the permanent, and the static is the changing. I have frequently used the phrase "the logic of contradictory identity" (taken from Nishida) to deal with this: Your raising the issue of time is another case where the logic of contradictory identity (LCI) applies. We experience continuity because we change, and experience change because we are continuous. One has a situation where the LCI is required when you have two terms, which contradict each other, but at the same time constitute each other.
The point of this is to keep the contradictory identity at the forefront, while metaphysical error occurs when one of the two terms is privileged over the other. The MOQ, in my view, falls into error because it privileges DQ over SQ (explicitly so, given that a true-blue MOQist will refer to them as DQ and sq, not DQ and SQ). Hence, I think you are wrong to say "because the interaction itself empirically precedes the static patterns". The empirical is the static pattern, which in being experienced is dynamic.
My other main gripe against the MOQ is its devaluation of intellect with respect to DQ. In this, the MOQ continues the modernist error of thinking of intellect and language as a set of human add-ons to a universe that is fundamentally without them. Instead, I see Intellect as also being a dynamic/static contradictory identity, that is, as being at the same metaphysical level as Quality, and so if one wants to investigate how the dynamic and static interact, there is no better place for it than investigating one's own consciousness. But, according to the MOQ, this is an error, which says we should put our intellect to sleep in order to experience "pure experience". I consider "pure experience" to be a MOQ chimera.
- Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Hamilton
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 4:05 AM
Subject: Re: MD Time
Hello again,
Luckily I just stumbled across the relevant chapter of Lila's Child, so I'm now aware that I'm doing something "dangerous" by trying to tie DQ to an existing concept. I definitely need to clarify my suggestion.
By "Time", I wasn't referring to the concepts we have of before and after, or the arbitary ways in which we divide time into minutes and seconds and so forth. If it's even possible, I was referring to time in a concept-free way, as the thoroughly empirical and undefined Big Long Now, equivalent to Pirsig's wordier description "the first slice of undifferentiated experience". I guess that Pirsig's description is much better, because "Time" has a monstrous amount of philosophical, conceptual and scientific baggage attached to it.
However, I still think that the MOQ leads to all sorts of interesting thoughts about time, with the proviso that these thoughts always involve intellectual conceptualisations. Time is the constant interaction of static patterns, though calling it "interaction" is misleading, because the interaction itself empirically precedes the static patterns. The success of a static pattern in this constant interaction (time) determines its quality. And so on...
Regards,
Mike
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 : Tue May 24 2005 - 16:37:44 BST