From: Destination Quality (planetquality@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 10:51:13 GMT
Hi paul, nice post I enjoyed it,
Paul:
>It's been a number of years since I read Kant so I may have forgotten
>something important and misunderstood your comparison. From what I
>recall, Kant saw his categories as necessary and universal *conditions
>for* objective experience although they didn't *arise from* experience
>and therefore must exist *prior to* and *independently of* experience
>itself.
Exactly.
>By contrast, the MOQ holds that experience (i.e. value) is fundamentally
>prior to intellectual concepts, yet is the starting point and ongoing
>source of reality and is therefore the starting point and ongoing source
>of any "categories" that are invented by the intellect. In the MOQ,
>nothing exists prior to or independently of experience.
Chris: That is very nice and all but when was the last time you experienced
a level?
>I think Kant arrived at his conclusion because, in his metaphysics,
>experience is something a subject does to an object and subjects and
>objects are all there is. Therefore, as the source of experience is
>objects (or things-in-themselves), and as objects don't contain
>conceptual frameworks themselves, the frameworks (or at least some
>fundamental aspects of them such as space and time) must already exist
>in the subject or a "transcendental ego."
>In the MOQ, pre-intellectual value is the source of both the subject and
>the objects. The conceptualisation of experience is neither universal
>nor final, but cultural and evolutionary. That is a big difference.
>
>As I said in the last post, I find that an eagerness to jump from
>similarity to identity often hinders understanding - just because the
>MOQ "categorises" static patterns into levels it doesn't mean that they
>are "categories" in the Kantian (which is a very specific and unusual)
>sense.
>Paul:
>Perhaps "stable" would be more fitting to your experience?
Chris, stable things or levels in this case do not survive.
>Chris said:
>What do you do when you say that something is static? You fixate it,
>that is what all metaphysicians do, fixating.
>
>Paul:
>Why just "metaphysicians"? Who doesn't "fix" reality with concepts? I
>think you are forwarding the mystic understanding of reality which is
>central to the MOQ and in one sense I agree. However, in another sense,
>saying that "there are no static levels" is as useful as saying there
>aren't actually seven days of the week, there aren't actually any states
>in the USA, there is no difference between murder and manslaughter,
>there is no difference between science and gossip........
Chris: It would be a very messy world if 'Plato' did not inhere in our
genes. This fixation enables us to understand, no doubts there. My problem
lies in making the levels transcendental or transcendent, the latter more
likely to occur these days. I want people to realise that there are large
parts of the world where people indeed do not have seven days in a week so
that it is very unlikely that these levels say more than what one man has to
say about, philosophologilising(oef?) Pirsig seems to be a general trend
here.
>Chris said:
>Do you really think when somebody says 'contingent (static) levels' that
>that makes any sense at all?
>
>Paul:
>Yes. What is wrong with that?
Chris: Contingency is characterised by insecurity and instability
>Chris said:
>Further if the levels would not be apriori the there should be ways to
>check that by empirical means; how do we do that?
>
>Paul:
>By "empirical" I think you mean a subject experiencing an object and all
>ideas belong in the subject, hence your question. In other words, as
>ideas are not in the object where do they come from? I believe this
>question bugged Einstein and is the question Kant answers with his a
>priori categories.
>
>In the MOQ, valuation, and not objects, is empirical reality and ideas
>are patterns of value, so the quality of ideas is empirically verifiable
>- some explanations are better than others. Imagine what science and
>indeed education would be like if no explanation was better than any
>other.
Chris: You say better I say more dynamic
>An empirically verifiable part of the MOQ levels, as with all theories,
>is, "Does it provide a good explanation or not?"
>
>Chris said:
>Have you ever noticed the aporetic character of the discussions when it
>comes to discerning what (events, 'things', developments etc..) belongs
>to which level? Ever wondered why?
>
>Paul:
>I think people have their own idea about what types of experience the
>levels define, that's all. I believe "scientists" still argue about what
>is dead or alive. Also, I think people sometimes make the mistake of
>trying to assign things entirely to one level or another.
Chris: They have their own ideas of what types of experience levels define;
the levels are accepted as ' given' !
>Chris said:
>And where are these levels to be found, where does this 'perspective'
>come from?
>
>Paul:
>I'm not sure what you are asking here. "The levels" are a description of
>experience. The MOQ perspective came from Robert Pirsig, his life
>experience, education and personal insight.
Chris: So why the fanatical commitment to it, that is how suggestions and
clues become dogma's.
Thanx, Chris
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