From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jun 15 2004 - 23:56:22 BST
Hi Paul,
>Paul:
>You seem to be equating Rand's Reason with Pirsig's Quality.
I'm just not rejecting either one as being incompatible with the other.
>"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.319]
>
>In the MOQ, reason is not required to 'pre-select' a structured reality,
>reason is secondary to value, it follows value. If you equate reason
>with value then I think you are moving away from Pirsig towards Plato.
I'm not equating them, but they certainly are related. My point is not
that the mind needs to use its faculty of reason to determine value in order
to create structured reality, but that the value that is followed is
reasonable, it is as it is for reasons, there is a reason for why quality
preselects in the way it does, why certain data harmonizes better than other
data. That reason is SQ, or "what we are". It isn't necessary that the
mind use reason to create reality, reason is inherent in Quality itself.
Is that wrong? I do NOT think that "what we are becoming" is unreasonable
or is unconnected to what we are, I think that we become what we become for
reasons rooted entirely in what we are. Dynamic change is reasonable, not
unreasonable, right?
>Johnny said:
>Reason, as in, the idea that there is only one way for consciousness to
>order and structure reality, and it is dependent on the prior order and
>structure of reality.
>
>Paul:
>Just because our experience isn't a random integration of sense-data, it
>does not follow that "there is only one way for consciousness to order
>and structure reality." This is similar to the stance taken by
>'objective idealists' who, whilst denying the independent existence of a
>world of objects, nevertheless maintain the existence of
>'things-as-they-are,' which in your case may be
>'things-as-they-have-to-be' or 'things-as-they-are-expected.'
I think there is only one way for things to be, things had to be the way
they are, and have to become what they become. Otherwise, DQ would conflict
with itself, it would not just make arbitrary decisions about what to
harmonize with, it would harmonize with multiple, conflicting things. There
would be no DQ if there were multiple possibilities for DQ, it would cancel
out the meaning of it.
>Johnny said:
>Unless someone is proposing that each moment bears no connection to the
>previous or next moments, I don't see how Rand and the MoQ are
>incompatible.
>
>Paul:
>I'm certainly not proposing that but I don't see what it has to do with
>deciding the compatibility of Pirsig and Rand.
If moments are connected, they are connected wholly and fully, there can't
be any slack in the connection. The next moment necessarily follows the
current moment. Given that, this flowing of SQ according to DQ is the same
as Reason. And if you don't agree that moments follow moments according to
necessity, if you think there is wiggle room for "free will" or "DQ", then I
say you also don't understand Reason, or you think there is room for
"unreason" and "irrationality" also.
>Johnny said:
>Rand just stresses reason, whereas Pirsig stresses value.
>
>Paul:
>Rand begins with an absolute objective reality which can be known and
>understood by reason.
>
>Pirsig begins with a fundamental reality that cannot be known or
>understood by reason.
>
>I think the difference is a little more than 'emphasis.'
Pirsig never says DQ existed without SQ did he? He didn't say one came
first. He just said Quality as a whole came first, but was there ever such
a time? I think that was "before" time, ie, never. There was never a time
of undifferentiated Quality.
I agree Pirsig tries to explain the ontological functioning and
connectedness of DQ and SQ, whereas Rand just deals with it as if it were
here and real, but again, I do not think that is incompatible. Rand does
see the role of DQ in trying to achieve excellence. To create, you have to
believe, to believe, there has to be something created to believe. It is
only wrong to think one view is right and the other wrong. That's the only
way people get in trouble and get confused.
>Johnny said:
>But you can't have either without the other. Both are aspects of
>Morality.
>
>Paul:
>I think the MOQ argues that there is no reason without value but there
>is value without reason. I agree that they are both aspects of Morality
>- static and Dynamic aspects.
>
>Paul
Yup, well all my posts always seem to come back to this. For example, I
disagree when Platt cites DQ as the source of beauty, as he implies that it
shines on things without being beholden to any reason for doing so. A great
new song needs to have no reason it is great, other than DQ inexplicably and
unreasonably saying "like this song, it is excellent and beautiful!" I do
not claim that people can know or explain why something seems beautiful or
valuable, but I know that there are reasons why we do. If there were no
reasons for something being beautiful or valuable, what is the point?
Johnny
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