From: Joe (jhmau@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Fri May 07 2004 - 18:53:31 BST
On 06 May 04 1:41 PM Steve writes:
Steve:
I want to try to give a better idea of what I mean by a pattern which I
think is also what Pirsig may mean by a pattern.
First of all, I see two perspectives that need to be understood and
reconciled in explaining the MOQ. The primary one which is empirical
is the perspective represented by the equation Quality = Experience.
The second perspective is represented by Quality = Reality. The
equating of Quality and Reality is not empirical to the extent that we
don't simply mean "Experience" when we say "Reality," but rather
Quality = Reality is an evolutionary theory. (In the MOQ Experience
also equals Reality but this is a postulate used to understand reality
rather than empirically based.) The difference between the two
perspectives is experiencing a value pattern such as gravity directly
as a pulling down on one's body (Quality = Experience) versus
experiencing gravity as the pattern of experience or inference where we
recognize that all things around us are pulled to the ground, too
(Quality = Reality). Here I intend to focus on the evolutionary
perspective of understanding Reality in terms of Quality.
Hi Steve Peterson and all,
joe: i quote Pirsig:
The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called
"Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality
doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of
definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to
intellectual abstractions. Chapter 5 paperback.
To the intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of
its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover
afterward, like too many cigarettes. Or a party that has lasted too long.
Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever.
What would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is,
in the strictist mystic sense, a degenerate activity. Chapter 5 Lila
Paperback
joe: IMO "intellectual abstractions" is degenerate. Anyone writing about
MOQ is degenerate. I have a taste of what degenerate means, even in
another's posting. It is not proper for me to point degeneracy out
specifically. Only the poster knows what he is defining, and I am not
sufficiently mystic as to know who I am let alone who someone else is.
Moreover I enjoy being degenerate.
I will accept you being degenerate and read on.
Steve:
I'll begin by putting Quality aside for now to focus on what a pattern is.
Joe Maurer
I think that understanding reality in terms of patterns rather
> than in terms of substance and mind is an idea that one can use
> regardless of whether or not one accepts Pirsig's Reality = Quality
> postulate. I think that there are philosophers out there who consider
> themselves "patternists" though I couldn't name any. At any rate, I'd
> like to show what I mean by viewing reality (sq) in terms of patterns
> and then show how Quality explains patterns to give a more complete
> picture of Reality. In other words, a patterns view does not require a
> metaphysical grounding but certainly benefits from a grounding in
> Quality.
>
> The clearest example that I might come up with for what I mean by a
> pattern is a river. If we try to define a river in terms of substance,
> "you can't step into the same river twice," but as a pattern, a river
> has a fairly stable existence with a recognizable structure. It's
> flowing "changingness" is even part of that structure, so it is without
> contradiction that we can call a river a "static pattern" even though a
> river flows. A river is not as stable as the patterns of molecules
> that we call rocks in some ways since we can move a rock to another
> location and all it's recognized properties will be maintained, but a
> river is more stable than a rock in other ways since forces that can
> break a rock into pebbles may only temporarily disrupt a river or
> divert its course. The rock better fits the concept of substance and
> is more real than a river in a substance-based metaphysics, but it is
> not more real than the rock in a pattern-based metaphysics. Using a
> patterns approach to reality, we might say that the rock is more stable
> but the river is more versatile, though relative to higher level
> patterns both are very stable and not very versatile.
>
> Patterns can have far weaker correlations with substance than a river
> does. We can think of gravity as a pattern though gravity has
> virtually no properties associated with substance. There are different
> ways in which we can do so. As a pattern of behavior of physical
> objects (which are themselves inorganic patterns), gravity is an
> inorganic pattern. As a symbol standing for this inorganic pattern in
> thought and communication, "gravity" is a social structure which is
> used in structures of thought. Structures of thought which we call
> ideas are recognized in the MOQ as intellectual patterns. So, a
> pattern-based metaphysics has no difficulty containing the forces
> described by physics nor the patterns of thought which are not
> influenced in the least by those forces.
>
> Platt didn't like the idea of thinking of a person as a pattern, but
> physically a person's atoms are exchanged with other atoms constantly
> while the pattern of arrangement of his cells is fairly stable. In
> Heraclitus' view, we never interact with the same person twice. But the
> pattern of a given person persists despite the ongoing exchanging of
> atoms and despite changes associated with the biological patterns of
> growing or aging and despite changes in the patterns of behavior
> identifiable as participation in social roles and despite changing
> patterns of thought. Despite all these changes, there is a structure
> called a person that persists as the river persists in spite of its
> flowing nature or changes in it's course. And like the river, our
> concept of a person includes the changes I've described above. Lack of
> change in the pattern of a person means death.
>
> (When Pirsig uses the phrase "static pattern" I don't think that he
> means to exclude change or to associate change with Dynamic Quality. I
> think the word static is used simply to distinguish static and Dynamic
> Quality and to associate static Quality with patterns, but "static
> patterns" may be redundant since I see patterns as static only in the
> sense that they are patterns. They represent structures or
> relationships that can include change as a river is constantly flowing,
> yet these structures are static in the sense that the patterns of flow
> persist over time.)
>
> Up to this point I've talked about patterns with minimal reference to
> Quality in part to point out that an introduction to the MOQ can begin
> with an explanation of the four types of patterns rather than the
> metaphysical postulate of Quality. (I would also recommend that in
> trying to explain the MOQ to someone who has not read Pirsig that
> patterns may be the best place to start.) But once one does postulate
> that Quality = Reality, the types of static patterns become even more
> powerful in explaining reality because one can then understand how
> values and much of mind can also be understood in terms of patterns and
> how types of patterns can be examined in light of knowledge of the
> direction of the evolutionary arrow to identify moral and immoral human
> behavior. This is because all the structures I've discussed can be
> understood as value relationships.
>
> As Pirsig demonstrated, a cause and effect relationship like A causes B
> can be just as sensibly reworded as B values precondition A. The
> pattern of gravity for example can be thought of as a preference that
> is extremely reliable like the pattern of me ordering General Tso's
> Chicken whenever he goes out to a Chinese restaurant (i.e. the pattern
> of preference for chicken is part of the collection of patterns that
> constitute me). So patterns are maintained as valuations. Thus, all
> patterns are really patterns of value.
>
> I don't know whether what I have said will be controversial or seem too
> obvious to have been said. I'm interested in your thoughts.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "If you compare the levels of static patterns that compose a human
> being to
>
> the ecology of a forest, and if you see the different patterns
> sometimes in
>
> competition with each other, sometimes in symbiotic support of each
> other,
>
> but always in a kind of tension that will shift one way or the other,
>
> depending on evolving circumstances, then you can also see that
> evolution
>
> doesn't take place only within societies, it takes place within
> individuals
>
> too. It's possible to see Lila as something much greater than a
> customary
>
> sociological or anthropological description would have her be. Lila then
>
> becomes a complex ecology of patterns moving toward Dynamic
> Quality. Lila
>
> individually, herself, is in an evolutionary battle against the static
>
> patterns of her own life....And Lila's battle is everybody's battle,
> you know?"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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