From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 20:11:38 BST
Hi Platt,
> > So I wouldn't say that interdependency is secondary, because the
> > static patterns that interpret the experience and give it meaning have
>to
> > be there first.
>
>Art (music) is first of all an experience. Later you can interpret and give
>the experience meaning if you like. About art, especially music, there's
>no need to think or say anything.
and later we had on this exchange:
> > Pure experience without any static patterns in which
> > the experience acts means that there is no difference between the
> > experience of a blow job and a hand grenade, or whatever the stale old
> > metaphor we use around here is...
>
>This is where you miss one of the major points of the MoQ. Experience is
>always of Quality. The two occur simultaneously only they are not two.
>Experience and value are exactly the same phenomenon. There's no
>difference, no separation. Morality and experience are identical.
>It's Quality that tells you the difference between one thing and another.
I've been having trouble seeing how pure experience, when seperated from
static patterns in which it is experienced, can have any shape or any, well,
qualities to it. It seems to me that without static patterns to experience
it in, an experience of art would not have any value, it wouldn't be bad or
good, because there wouldn't be any way to know what it means. I'm not
talking about reflecting on it afterwards, I'm talking about being able to
feel the heat of the stove as a bad experience. I say without the static
patterns of burns and pain and hot stoves stored deep in the patterns of
morality, it wouldn't hurt, it would have no meaning. There'd be no hot
stove, and no one sitting on it.
But maybe you are saying that the experience, or the quality event, contains
in it the static patterns of the stove and the sitter, and all the goodness
or badness, is created by or found within the event, or is eminating from
the event. I do believe that the whole universe is created with each
moment (each experience) and that the past is created with each moment, so I
certainly go along with the idea that everything, including the context of
seemingly pre-existing static patterns, is contained in experience. History
is created fresh each moment. But here's where my determinism, aka my
reason and rationalism, kicks in: I believe that the universe that each
quality event creates must be connected to previous quality events - the
next moment will still me see sitting here typing the next letter of this
sentence, it won't be disconnected irrationally and I'll be on a beach in
Cancun all healthy and tanned, not realizing that one moment ago I was
typing a post in Massachusetts, all pastey and pale. That I stay me is
something I think is essential to philosophy. Otherwise there'd be no
therefores: Descartes would get to "I think", and then he'd have to start
over again, if he was even still Descartes. And also, determinism and
reason dictate that the experience of one person will have to line up with
the experience of another person. If we both walk down the same street, we
will both have seen the same buildings, if we both examine history, we will
find the same history. (One or both of us could be wrong, but rationalism
and reason says that there is a single version of history and that things
don't suddenly change for no reason.)
A pattern carries itself forward in time. I think some people see patterns
as shapes of substance in space, like a toaster is a pattern, or they think
of an institution, like a government, without thinking of them as a toaster
or government that continues to be a toaster or government through time.
(The patterns also take shape in the three dimensions, of course, and are
what make a toaster different from a government). What Reason means to me is
that each moment - each experience - is dependent on the last moment, and
patterns do their patterning in the fabric of time as well as space. It is
also over time that the patterns change, and some patterns are cycles or
trends, like the lunar cycle and population growth, but patterns have a
self-abiding disposition to continue to hold together, and they change only
because other patterns interact with them and cause changes. And as they
can't help but interact with other patterns they can't help but change, for
they are all in the same universe, and every pattern but the base class
pattern (morality itself, or the word) is made up of subpatterns, and all
but the highest most nebulous patterns are constituents of superpatterns.
This has all been a long way of saying again that experience is of static
patterns of morality (even "mystical" experience, which is why mystical
experiences are recognized as mystical experiences and aren't completely
different from each other).
> > Rachmaninov had to come first, and someone had to
> > introduce you to him, before you could experience his concerto, so there
> > is a dependence there before your experience. And others depend on
> > you to educate them about static patterns, or Rachmaninov might never >
>be experienced again.
>
>This is your determinism bit that I completely reject simply by
>performing the simple experiment of wiggling my finger to the left or the
>right as I wish, anytime I wish.
I knew you'd say that. What you are rejecting is your responsibility for
how your actions affect other people. Morality determines your actions, and
your actions, in turn, effect morality and other people. Believe it or not,
when you choose to wiggle your finger, you have to.
Johnny
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