From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Fri Aug 15 2003 - 18:53:25 BST
Paul,
> Paul:
> OK, but what do we gain from replacing Quality with Intelligence as a
> central mystic reality?
I don't want to replace it, I want to add it. This stems from my reading of
Franklin Merrell-Wolff, who describes two Realizations. The first was the
usual mystical one that Pirsig refers to in Lila, that of experiencing pure
DQ, that is, of having "blown out" all patterns. Merrell-Wolff thought that
that experience was IT, but was surprised a month later by having a second
Realization, which he tentatively labelled that of High Indifference, which
went beyond the first. From the vantage point of the second, he realized
that the first, though deserving of the all the superlatives ascribed to it,
was still incomplete in that it entailed the absence, or denial, of the
world, that is, of SQ.
Now Pirsig does not "deny" SQ, as is obvious from it being static *Quality*.
However, there is a tendency to treat DQ as superior to SQ, and that is what
I want to counter with emphazing that God is Intelligence *as well as*
Quality. Intelligence has in its etymology the concept of "cutting", i.e.,
differentiation, that Quality does not.
> > Paul:
> > I would say that the intellectual level put one together based on a
> > pre-intellectual aesthetic evaluation of alternatives.
>
> Scott:
> Where did the pre-intellectual aesthetic evaluation of alternatives come
> from?
>
> Paul:
> Dynamic Quality.
But DQ is "pure" -- no alternatives, no differentiation, and hence no
reality, no world, no nothing.
> > Paul:
> > Yes, inorganic nature is actually postulated and confirmed by a
> > correspondence to the deduced consequences of a hypothesis, but I
> > would say that sensation is empirical and immediately apprehended, but
of an
> > aesthetic nature, that is, value differentiates the experience, not
> > "things-in-themselves".
>
> Scott:
> I would phrase it more as the value and inherent conceptual structure of
> what we perceive through our senses is what makes it that we see the
> same things.
>
> Paul:
> Pirsig's explanation denies an inherent conceptual structure, to use a
> recently used passage again:
>
> "What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that
> this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the
> communications that we have with other men we receive from them
> ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not
> come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their
> harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these
> reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may
> infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus
> it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this
> quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can
> ever know" ZMM Ch22
>
> Which is why I think that Quality provides a better term for fundamental
> reality than Intelligence.
I think Pirsig swings too far toward "blank slate" epistemology here. While
it is the case that different cultures and different eons will experience
differently, as long as we are biological and physical beings there is a
limit to these differences. By adding Intelligence, one can accept primodial
Ideas into one's epistemology, even if we can't expect our sublunary reason
not to distort them to some extent.
>
> Scott:
> However, that value and conceptual structure includes more than what
> we see. Or rather, what we see is that value and conceptual structure
> projected into spacetime. Quantum mechanics makes this pretty clear.
> Particles and waves are two different projections into spacetime of
> something that can't be confined to spacetime measures.
>
> Paul:
> Yes, the projection into "spacetime" is a harmonious conceptual
> organisation of experience. However, remember that particles and waves
> are two deduced entities which explain different patterns of data; they
> have never been empirically experienced.
You are losing me, I think because you are not distinguishing between
figuration and alpha-thinking. I would say that figuration produces
particle-like and wave-like sense-data, while alpha-thinking deduces an
intellectual pattern to explain that sense-data. I would also say that that
alpha-thinking would never get to first base unless there is structure
*before* the empirical experience. Our (alpha-thinking) concepts are the
same kind of thing as that structure.
> Paul:
> In the MOQ, experience (as synonymous with Quality) is undivided, any
> intellectual distinctions logically come after; thus I think it is more
> a matter of common sense that "experience comes to us in S/O form"
> rather than an empirical experience.
Is experience synonymous with Quality? I would say it synonymous with the
division. Otherwise there is only an unknowable Pleroma. The Pleroma
undergoes withdrawal from itself *in order that* it can experience itself.
>
> > Paul:
> > The something labelled "experience" is Dynamic Quality, the conceptual
> > organization and explanation becomes static quality. Part of that
> > explanation is the postulated "object" (inorganic-biological) and
> > postulated "self" (social-intellectual).
>
> Scott:
> I disagree. Experience is the polaric interaction of DQ and SQ.
>
> Paul:
> I think that experience is Quality differentiating into Dynamic Quality
> as the pre-intellectual immediately apprehended cutting edge and static
> quality as the distinguishable universe of sensation, thought and
> response - with a scale of awareness between the two aspects, the
> polarity of which may be termed as "tension".
While I maintain that DQ depends totally on SQ (and vice versa). DQ appears
"higher" to us because we are (most all of the time) unaware of it.
> Scott:
> Doesn't a cell differentiate between food and non-food?
>
> Paul:
> I don't know, does it carry around an idea of "food"? Remember that the
> "cell" and "food" are differentiated by intellectual patterns first and
> superimposed on our "observation" of the "cell".
Life carries around an idea of food.
> > Paul:
> > The MOQ says that aesthetic experience creates ideas which create
> > explanations of experience, which includes things like "objects".
>
> Scott:
> Except that one perceives an object as an object -- something isolated
> -- before one has an explanation.
>
> Paul:
> I would say that an "object" is part of the explanation. By
> "explanation" here I mean something closer to perception which
> intellectual patterns provide without awareness, not necessarily a
> deliberate and conscious verbal or written explanation. They are
> happening all the time, and you can become more aware of the process
> with closer attention. Deliberate perceptual tricks can highlight the
> process too.
Here again I see the need to distinguish between figuration and
alpha-thinking. In particular, I think "explanation" belongs to
alpha-thinking. While "objecthood" belongs to figuration.
>
> In Lila's Child p505, Pirsig and Dan Glover are discussing intellectual
> patterns as being "a rational voice inside our heads", Pirsig states:
>
> "It seems loudest [the rational voice - static intellectual patterns]
> when new things are happening that need explanation. Soto Zen meditation
> is a carefully contrived situation where as little as possible is
> happening and this rational voice tends to run down like an alarm clock
> that nobody is winding. When it stops completely enlightenment can
> happen." [My brackets]
>
> This is what I mean by "explanation" in the sense that I have used it
> above.
I suppose one can call enlightenment the ultimate in explanation, but I'm
not inclined to do so. I think in belongs in S/O: there is an object that a
subject explains.
- Scott
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