From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 05:08:24 GMT
Hi David,
It's a lot more than just changing the terms from "substance" to "stable
pattern of value". Without addressing what that pattern is, it pretty much
leaves it exactly as it was before. We still seem to have a thing "out
there" that is exactly the same as substance, but now we call it a pattern
of value. To really change the tune, you have to recognize that a pattern,
say a glass of water, an expectation of that pattern continuing to hold
together, it isn't substance with another name. The pattern exists as
expectaton in the mind, not out there. Everything out there is an illusion,
but, like Matt S said about 'thoughts', being an illusion doesn't mean that
it isn't 'real', it just shows where it lives. Everything probably is and
will be as it is expected to be, nothing has changed by recognizing that.
The only practical difference is in recognizing our power and
responsibility, our duty to morality. If we truly expected the glass of
water to fall apart, it probably would fall apart. The whole shebang would,
if we stop expecting it to hold together - if we stop respecting morality.
But we don't expect the glass to break apart, because we respect and have
faith in the patterns to continue as patterns, because they should.
>From: David Buchanan <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: "'moq_discuss@moq.org'" <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: RE: MD Pirsig the postmodernist?
>Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 19:50:51 -0700
>
>
> > 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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