From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 30 2003 - 19:04:28 GMT
Scott (I think):Nevertheless, this attitude seems to me to more than a
little
nominalist, since it looks to that which comes from the outside as
privileged over that which comes from the inside.
What is this outside/inside distinction, reality=quality=experience
we experience, there is no inside or outside, it is outsideless.
We can create a theoretical cosmic story but we can not
experience anything outside of experience, I suggest, pretty
obvious really.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott R" <jse885@spinn.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: MD Self-consciousness
Paul,
> Paul:
> Yes, sense perception refers to the creation of biological patterns and
> limits what is meant by "static patterns emerging from Dynamic Quality."
> I think I see what you are getting at. Whilst the MOQ is an empirical
> philosophy, its empirical reality is value, not just biological sense
> data. This quote from ZMM..
I think you're correct on this, though Pirsig first defines empiricism as
"[empiricism] claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the
senses or by thinking about what the senses provide." [Ch. 8], though he
goes on to include art and morality and "even religious mysticism" as
"verifiable". Nevertheless, this attitude seems to me to more than a little
nominalist, since it looks to that which comes from the outside as
privileged over that which comes from the inside.
>
> "The overwhelming majority of facts, the sights and sounds that are
> around us every second and the relationships among them and everything
> in our memory...these have no Quality, in fact have a negative quality.
> If they were all present at once our consciousness would be so jammed
> with meaningless data we couldn't think or act. So we pre-select on the
> basis of Quality, or, to put it Phædrus' way, the track of Quality
> pre-selects what data we're going to be conscious of, and it makes this
> selection in such a way as to best harmonize what we are with what we
> are becoming." [ZMM p.320]
>
> ..is describing a process operating outside of and prior to my
> understanding of thinking, but to you it is describing an aspect of
> thinking. I can accept that in the limited sense that Quality is at once
> the potential for everything we see, feel, think etc. and, as such, is
> pre-selecting the inorganic, biological, social and intellectual
> patterns that compose static reality. In other words, undifferentiated
> value is also all differentiated value, including intellectual patterns.
> This is in accordance with a Pirsig comment in Lila's Child:
>
> "In the language of everyday life, reality and intellect are different.
> >From the language of the Buddha's world, they are the same, since there
> is no intellectual division that governs the Buddha's world." [Lila's
> Child p.567]
>
> It seems to me that thinking in "the world of everyday affairs" is
> entirely different from thinking "in Buddha's world," and as such, I
> prefer to restrict intellect to the former - conscious, deliberate
> activity such as planning, predicting, calculating, reasoning etc. This
> is perhaps where our disagreement about intellect lies.
Yes. My objection to your preference is that we are doing metaphysics here,
which requires us to leave behind the "world of everyday affairs". To carry
that notion of thinking into one's metaphysics is the problem.
> Paul:
> I've tried to find your post on centric mysticism to Matt, which one is
> it?
Here's the centric/differential post (10/21):
Matt,
[Matt:]> A pragmatic interpretation of mysticism says that words are
sometimes incapabable of dealing with the experiences we have. So what do
we do? We make up new words, we start fudging the meaings of old words, we
use _metaphors_ for that which cannot be conveyed literally. All of the
words you can use to describe, point at, convey the meaning of mysticism
("mystical reality, the void, eternity, the undifferentiated aesthetic
continuum, the primary reality, the pre intellectual reality, the father of
all, the womb of creation, the ground of being") all ultimately fail at
being literal, at conveying a meaning that is assimilable into an
established language game. That's what it means for DQ and Quality to be
undefined. They are metaphors, and also new terms.
>
> The terms "DQ" and "Quality" themselves, like all terms, ultimately fail.
Simply saying the words are an attempt to literalize the unliteralizable.
So, when I say that DQ is a compliment we pay after the fact, I'm saying
that Dynamic Quality is a static pattern that we use to try and make sense
of an experience that does not make sense within any established pattern.
When we say something was Dynamic as a term of endorsement, it is a
compliment because there is no way, at that point, to explain why we value
that experience. If we could explain it, that would mean it was assimilable
into a language game and so not really Dynamic. As we become able to
explain it, it loses its Dynamic status and becomes static, and so
referencing a now static pattern as Dynamic references the past origin of
that pattern. Saying a new static pattern was Dynamic is paying it a
compliment, saying that its good that it originated.
>
> So when you say "we are suppose[d] to pretend a word, a phrase, a concept
isn't real" I think you yourself are missing the point of mysticism. I know
you don't think that a word, phrase, or concept gets at mysticism in any
infallible way because if you did, mystics would jump all over you. I'm not
pretending a word or concept is unreal. I'm not even pretending an
experience is unreal. I'm shifting the meaning of the words, phrases, and
concepts we use to try and cope with mystical experiences so that certain
purely philosophical problems do not arise. And I think my interpretation
loses nothing of mysticism's significance.
[Scott:]
Hence my adoption of the logic of contradictory identity, and why I think
that the MOQ is ultimately a failure. Again, I want to refer to Robert
Magliola's distinction between 'centric' and 'differential' mystical
"explanations". Centric explanations are like those you refer to above, and
Pirsig's Quality, DQ, and SQ terminology is a perfect example. As such it
leads the MOQ into error, by stating that mystical experience is "pure DQ",
which leads to the gnostic consequence that SQ is evil, since it gets in the
way of experiencing pure DQ..
Now I don't really think that that (SQ is evil) is what Pirsig thinks, but
why not? Differential mystical philosophy avoids this from the get-go by
*starting* with contradictory identity. It doesn't allow the reification of
anything (and hence avoids what Rorty doesn't like about metaphysics) in
one's terminology.
- Scott
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