From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Oct 09 2005 - 02:54:15 BST
Matt and all MOQers:
Its been an entire day since I sent this. It must be too big to get thru, so
instead of chopping it in half I'm just going to delete Matt's comments,
only send my responses and call it a bad essay. Matt knows what he said and
anyone who's interested can easily find out...
dmb replied:
I know it takes time and energy. That's why I always try to remember to end
by saying "thanks" to the readers. Naturally, I'm all the more grateful for
a written response. In fact, it seems that you are going out of your way to
explain the jargon and I've been reading on the side in an effort to locate
your position. As a result, I think there we are very close to having a
genuine disagreement, nearly on the same page about some central issues.
That's some kind of progress, even if there's no fruit.
This helps. This is where we begin to have an actual disagreement, rather
than simply talking past each other. Or so I hope. As I understand it, it
is incorrect to put the emphasis on "aesthetic" in the way you're doing
here. The kind of move that turns this "pure sensation" into a "creative
judgement" is supposed to be precluded by the first word in Northrop's
phrase; undifferentiated. If that primary aesthetic experience is concieved
as a judgement, then it can not rightly be called undifferentiated. It would
be like saying the pre-intellectual experience is an intellectual
experience. Iit would be like saying that unpatterned Quality is patterned,
like saying the undivided reality is divided. In other words, it simply
contradicts the meaning of the terms. This is why I think Pirsig and Hayes
ARE saying the same thing. They're both talking about an experience in which
judgement is absent. I would even go so fat as to say that taking the
"undifferentiated aesthetic continuum", the "pure sensation" or "immeditate
experience" as a reference to some kind of "valuing" or "judging" is to
inappropriately let SOM's subjective self creep back into the conversation.
But the main idea here is simply that an aesthetic judgement is, by
definition, NOT undifferentiated. Those "creative judgements", like "static
patterns", ARE differentiations. So what you've done here is turn DQ into
sq. You've turned the undivided into the divided, which effectively removes
DQ altogether and leaves us only with sq. Does that make sense? Notice how
Pirsig CONTRASTS aesthetic quality with rational decisions and descriptions
in the hot stove example...
"The negative aesthetic quality of the hot stovein the earlier example was
now given sme added meaning by a static-Dynamic division of Quality. When
the person who sits on the stove first discovers his low-Quality situation,
the front edge of his experience is Dynamic (pure sensation). He does not
think, "This stove is hot," and then make a rational decison to get off. A
'dim perception of he knows not what' gets him off Dynamically. Later he
gererates static patterns of thought (creative judgements) to explain the
situation." LILA page 116
Oh, we're very, very close to an actual disagreement here. Bravo! I am most
certainly "suggesting that some part of our experience is not valuing or
judging". As I understand it, that's exactly what DQ is, an experience in
the absense of judgement, an immediate experience that is prior to any kind
of cognitive discrimination or intellectual assessment. Also, I'm not saying
that "static patterns are where all the creativity happens. Not exactly.
I'm saying that static patterns ARE creative judgements. I'm saying the
divided world is composed of these static creations, these persistant
judgements.
I'm glad to be in such good company in my wrongness. So I got that going for
me. Ha! If the four of us were in a room together, then you would be in the
minority, but when it comes to the world of philosophy, I think Hayes,
Pirsig and I are part of a tiny minority. In any case, let's see if we can
get at why you think "pure sensation" is not a "good concept", shall we?
As the explanation above tries to show, I think you are having trouble with
the distinction, you have converted DQ into sq, which simply denies the
distinction. You seem to be saying that we can get everything we want out of
mysticsim by converting it into a part of our patterned, conditioned
interpretation, which effectively eliminates anything like pure experience,
unpatterned experience. I think that getting rid of the distinction gets rid
of the mystical experience itself. It cuts the MOQ in half and throws one
half into the philosphical dust bin. Stay with me here, thanks to your
reluctnat explanations, I think I'm about to go beyong simply repeating
myself...
As I understand it, the distinction between DQ and sq does not "inevitably"
lead to anything of the sort. I think you are interpreting Pirsig's
assertions about pre-intellectual experience as if he were talking about
something like Kant's things-in-themselves or Plato's forms, as if he were
talking about some pre-existing, epistemologically inaccessable reality. But
he's not talking about some unknowable reality behind the appearances. He's
talking about a certain kind of experience. But what could be futher from an
epistemologically inaccessable reality than pure experience? As the labels
indicate, immediate apprehensions, direct experiences, pure sensations are
thoroughly accessable. Remember all that talk about epistemological
pluralism? Remember that we are here talking about two categories of
congnition?
As I understand it, in the MOQ, there is no distinction between reality and
appearances. In the MOQ, there is no pre-existing, epistemologically
inaccessable reality, there is only experience. See, unlike Kant's
things-in-themselves, there are no "things" in the "undifferentiated
aesthetic continuum". Otherwise, we'd have to call it the "differentiated
continuum" or somthing like that. This is why we can also use the term
"no-thing-ness" to refer to to this continuum. In the MOQ, the divided world
is not supposed to correspond to any kind of pre-existing reality. We don't
get into the problem of trying to adequately describe nothingness because
there is literally no thing to describe. The MOQ's test of truth does not
depend on appearance corresponding to reality in that sense at all. The MOQ
only says that high quality intellectual explanations have to agree with
experience. In that sense, the MOQ is just as anti-realist as any
neo-pragmatist. In that sense, the MOQ rejects the distinction between
reality and appearance too. See, I think you're trying to put Pirsig's
assertions about DQ into an historical conversation about the relationship
between subject and objects and are taking DQ to be some kind of mystical
object or mystical reality. But in the MOQ, the claim is only that DQ is
INTELLECTUALLY unknowable, beyond intellectual definitions. Philosophical
mysticism asserts that this primary reality can be apprehended ONLY through
non-rational means. This is why "pure sensation" is contrasted with
"creative judgements" and "pre-intellectual experience" is contrasted with
"static patterns". Both of them describe a non-rational experience, a purely
aesthetic experience without all the usual divisions or judgements.
See, I don't think I'm talking about "adequacy" because I'm not trying to
"represent" something already there. I'm talking about the nothingness that
humans experience directly and which can not be represented, can not be
intellectually known or ratinally defined. Huge difference. See, I think the
MOQ would and does go along with the anti-realist idea that there is no
pre-existing reality with which our interpretations must correspond. (And I
don't think it makes any sense to talk about experience as if it were
"something already there" either.) I think this anti-realist stance does
lead to a rejection of epistemology, but only in terms of subjects and
objects. I don't think it prevents us from having epistemological
conversations within the context of the MOQ in particular or philosophical
mysticism in general because it rejects SOM and the appearance/reality
distinction along with it. See, in the MOQ subjects and objects are BOTH
static patterns. They're both creative judgements. Its not that pre-existing
subjects are making judgements about some pre-existing objective reality,
its that both of them ARE creations produced by our intellectual divisions.
The static/Dynamic split puts both subjects and objects on the static side
of the equation.
What's the purpose of making a distinction between divided and undivided
reality? As I understand it, we're talking about the MOQ's first and most
important distinction. We're talking about the static/Dynamic split. There's
more than one reason, more than one purpose, but I suppose the main reasons
for making this distinction is "to explain Indian mysticism". ( page 109)
"with the identification of static and Dynamic as the fundamental division
of the world, Phaedrus felt that some kind of goal had been reached. This
first division of the MOQ now coverd the spectrum of experience from
primitive mysticism to quantum mechanics." (page 120) As you can see, these
lines come pretty early in the book and you've probably noticed how the
first division is developed and continued RigHT on through to the very last
pages. But I think its pretty clear that static/Dynamic split grew out of
the desire to create a system that does not exclude mysticism the way SOM
does, or even the way a classic/romantic split would. Its only a little bit
of an exaggeration to say that the whole point and purpose of the MOQ is to
create a system which does not dismiss enlightenment as some kind of brain
fart or crazy platypus. I seem to recall that he said something about values
and morals too, but its pretty clear mysticism is central to the whole
project.
The distinction is made to include a category of experiences that were
previously excluded, to bring in a whole range of human experiences and put
them on the philosophical table for consideration. Pirsig introduces the
distinction to make a place for things like mysticism and yet you say that
"we can do without that distinction and still get everything we want out of
mysticism". I don't think that statement can be squared with a proper
understanding of the MOQ. As Pirsig says late in the book, when "Dynamic
Quality is identified with religious mysticism it produces an avalanche of
information as to what Dynamic Quality is." (page 377) From beginning to
end, that's what its all about. So when you suggest no harm would be done by
erasing that distinction, I tend to freak out. That's when I get all
dramatic and tell you you're taking the engine off the bike with this move,
that this move rips the heart out of the thing. But its not too hyperbolic.
I mean, I hope I've at least begun to explain the difference between DQ and
those other things you want to keep out of it, like the appearance/reality
distinction or some epistemically inaccessable Kantian reality or Plato's
bad table manners or whatever else you have up your sleave.
Thanks for your time,
dmb
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