From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 02:50:51 GMT
> DMB said:
> While its true that matter or substance is re-described in the MOQ as
> inorganic patterns of values, I don't think we can go so far as to say the
> MOQ denies the existence of material. Pirsig's attack is upon a
METAPHYSICS
> of substance, not substance itself. He's trying to overthrow scientific
> materialism, the stance that objective physical reality is the bedrock of
> the world.
RICK
Actually David, I think Matt is correct on this point when he says,
"Technically, there is no material in the MoQ." I base that assessment on
the following passage...
PIRSIG (LILA ch8, p120)
The next platypus to fall is "substance." Like "causation," "substance" is
a derived concept, not anything that is directly experienced. No one has
ever seen substance and no one ever will. All people ever see is data. It
is assumed that what makes the data hang together in consistent patterns is
that they inhere in this "substance." But as John Locke pointed out in the
seventeenth century, if we ask what this substance is, devoid of any
properties, we find ourselves thinking of nothing whatsoever. The data of
quantum physics indicate that what are called "subatomic particles" cannot
possibly fill the definition of a substance. The properties exist then
disappear, then exist, and then disappear again in these little bundles
called "quanta." These bundles are not continuous in time, yet an
essential, defined characteristic of "substance" is that it *is* continuous
in time. Since the quantum bundles are not substance and since it is a
usual scientific assumption that these subatomic particles compose
everything there is, then it follows that THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE IN THE WORLD
NOR HAS THERE EVER BEEN (emphasis added). The whole concept is a grand
metaphysical illusion.
RICK
I think that this paragraph makes it pretty explicit that Pirsig completely
denies the existence of anything called "substance".... No?
DMB says:
Excellent point! You rock! But, not so fast. Let me pick up the quote
exactly where you left off...
"In his first book, Phaedrus had railed against the conjuror, Aristotle, who
invented the term and started it all. But if there is no substance, it must
be asked, then why isn't everything chaotic? Why do our experiences ACT as
if they inhere in something? If you pick up a glass of water why don't the
properties of that glass go flying off in different directions? What is it
that keeps these properties uniform if it is not something called substance?
That is the question tht created the concept of substance in the first
place. The answer provided by the MOQ is similar to the "causation"
platypus. Strike the word "substance" wherever it appears and substitute the
expression "stable inorganic pattern of value" Again, the difference is
linguistic. It doesn't make a wit of difference in the laboratory which term
is used. No dials change their readings. The observed laboratory data are
exactly the same."
The chapter lists a number of problems, or platypi, that SOM has created and
substance is one of these. It is a deduction based on experience, but like
causation, no one has actually been able to find it. "Substance", he says on
the previous page, "is a derived concept, not anything that is directly
experienced". The linguistic shift to inorganic patterns of value, then, is
meant to overcome the metaphysical assumptions about the data, while
retaining the data itself. I mean, we still drink from glasses of water.
Just because it is held together by a different set of terms, just because
physical objects are not as solid or persistent as SOM would have us
believe, that does not meab will be thirsty from now on, if you know what I
mean. Pirsig only answers the original question, what is it that holds these
properties together, in a different way; by getting rid of what Aristotle
started and re-unifying objects with values.
Thanks.
DMB
Hey, all you pragmatists and pomos, there are some very good anti-absolutist
comments from Pirsig in chapter 8. Check it out.
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