From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Oct 01 2003 - 13:58:03 BST
Scott,
> > Platt,
> > Intellect (thinking) is not a response to DQ. Thinking is the
> > patterning of pure experience (Quality) into static symbolic forms.
> > What responds to DQ is not intellect but a vague sense of something
> > better. One's initial reaction to great art (or getting off a hot
> > stove) isn't intellectual. It's immediate, involuntary, instinctive,
> > intuitive, visceral, spontaneous. Thinking about experience is
> > secondary. Thinking about thinking is even further removed from DQ.
Scott:
> ????. Apparently, the fourth and highest level of SQ is the furthest
> removed from DQ. Something's backwards.
Platt:
If you think being a mindless lion is better than being a mindful
human, then I'd suggest you have something backwards. The creative
force of DQ makes for higher quality patterns. A pattern with the
ability to think is better than a pattern that can't. It's better for
doctor to kill a germ than a germ to kill a doctor. It's better to
think independently than to simply regurgitate a party line.
Scott:
> You did not respond to my analysis of the hot stove example.
> Apparently
> you think that it is the " immediate, involuntary, instinctive,
> intuitive, visceral, spontaneous" that is response to DQ. I see these
> (except perhaps "intuitive") as all static responses. The Dynamic is
> found when one can overcome these reflexes, when one is supremely
> mindful -- that is, operating on the intellectual level. What you seem
> to value sounds very New Age-y to me.
>
> As I said to Paul, why don't we all get lobotomies? True, we couldn't
> create great art, but it seems we would be much closer to DQ, by
> adopting this outlook.
Platt:
Maybe you can explain the passage in Chp. 9 of Lila where Pirsig talks
about DQ in relation to a baby of which the following is a brief
excerpt:
"From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not what, compels
attention. This generalized "something,' Whitehead's "dim
apprehension,' is Dynamic Quality."
Not "supremely mindful" would you say? If you'll review what Pirsig
says about the nature of DQ in Ch.9 (the song, the heart attack, the
baby) you'll see that "mindful" has nothing to do with it--until after
the event.
As for DQ being a "static response," you're right in the sense that we
know the quality of an experience before thinking about it:
"When the person who sits on the stove first discovers his low-Quality
situation, the front edge of his experience is Dynamic. He does not
think, "This stove is hot," and then make a rational decision to get
off. A "dim perception of he knows not what" gets him off Dynamically.
Later he generates static patterns of thought to explain the
situation." (5)
Call it a biological reflex if you wish. I know of nothing in the MOQ
that suggests our response to Quality (experience) is supernatural.
Finally, I'm I right in assuming you believe in Berkeley's philosophy
of idealism?
Platt
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