Thanks for that link Rog, I like what I read.
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 19:59:46 EST
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: MD Glenn, Platt, Ant and the creation of patterns
>
> Rog Replies To Glenn and Platt (though it seems to apply to the recent
> Elephant Marco discussion too)
>
> GLENN:
> Finally, there's this business about DQ creating substance during quality
> experiences. There's no empirical evidence for this, and it contradicts
> science because a rock that you create and which you claim to be several
> minutes old can be carbon-dated and shown to be several million years old.
> Also, this idea of humans creating substances like rocks on-the-fly
> contradicts another part of MOQ, which states that the inorganic level evolved
> and pre-dated humans. In this case either evolution is wrong or the creative
> power of DQ is not true.
>
> You didn't respond to this. When I brought this up in a post last July in a
> rebuttal to Pirsig's resolution of the mind-matter problem, I recall you
> saying Roger had an answer for this, but you couldn't remember it. Roger
> didn't respond then but perhaps he didn't read our thread. Would he care to
> now?
>
> ROG:
> All of your questions are answered in Anthony McWatt's summary of the MOQ. I
> find it corresponds somewhat with what Elephant has been saying lately as
> well. Below is Ant's intro:
>
> ************************************************ Introduction to Pirsig's
> "Metaphysics of Quality"
>
>
> The "Metaphysics of Quality" (MOQ) was a programme introduced by Robert Pirsig
> in his 1991 novel "Lila". "Quality" as referred to, by Pirsig, is "immediate,
> undivided, experience" . That is to say immediate experience before any
> division consciousness may make between internal or external states. This is
> similar to the Cittamatra tradition in Buddhism which asserts that entities
> exist within the flow of perceptions but not as independent external objects .
>
> Consequently, the MOQ shares the fundamental teaching of Buddhism in that an
> incorrect view of reality is to see a distinct and persistent mind and body
> supporting consciousness where a subject is discerned, along with its objects
> . And that a correct view of reality is...
>
> "to see no persistent mind or body - no subject - since there are no distinct
> and persistent mind objects available to perception."
>
> To which Guenther adds:
>
> "Since no experience occurs more than once and all repeated experiences
> actually are only analogous occurrences, it follows that a thing or material
> substance can only be said to be a series of events interpreted as a thing,
> having no more substantiality than any other series of events we may
> arbitrarily single out. Thus the distinction between "mental" and "material"
> becomes irrelevant and it is a matter of taste to speak of physical objects."
>
> Therefore, for Pirsig, immediate experience (or Quality) is experience where
> there is no distinction between what is experienced and the act of
> experiencing itself. Quality is the changing flux of reality that logically
> comes before any conceptual distinctions such as subjects and objects are
> made. The concepts of subject and object are commonly confused with the
> essence of reality because they have become such a common apparatus for
> describing, understanding and analysing that reality .
>
> This is not to say conceptualisation in itself is a problem (for the MOQ is a
> set of concepts) but the confusion of concepts for reality itself is. This is
> probably the most difficult part of Pirsig's philosophy to understand and is
> termed by Buddhists as "right wisdom" .
>
>
> Moreover, following the thinking of Alfred North Whitehead, "immediate,
> undivided, experience" is interpreted as an event by Pirsig. He phrases it
> thus:
>
> "Quality is not a thing. It is an event. It is the event at which the subject
> becomes aware of the object... The Quality event is the cause of the subjects
> and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the
> Quality!"
>
> In this quote, Pirsig is implying that an analysis of the world in terms of
> subjects and objects is a product of one particular worldview in which the
> recognition of the "event" co-exists and is dependent upon the recognition of
> an "object" acting on a "subject".
>
> Pirsig opposes this view and, moreover, believes that subjects, objects, and
> events are only concepts applied to reality (and, as for any concepts, maps of
> reality, not reality itself) .
>
> Another metaphysical error, according to Pirsig, is to take the notion of
> "event" and consider it dependent upon those of subject and object. A more
> faithful rendering is given by reversing the relationship, so understanding
> how subject and object are themselves indefinite and are devoid of continuity
> . It is illogical to put them otherwise as Bertrand Russell states:
>
> The stuff of which the world of our pure experience is composed is, in my
> belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either .
>
> Moreover, even in the MOQ, events are merely analytical tools - ways of
> dividing the world into units ready for further processing. This is the
> preference of Pirsig on empirical grounds. We experience the world as a stream
> of events, from which inferences are made about subjects and objects, which
> then serve to inform our view of the world.
>
> Both subjects and objects, therefore, are perceived by Pirsig as
> generalisations from experience. Metaphysical systems which employ these
> concepts (explicitly or implicitly) are referred to by him as subject-object
> metaphysics (SOM) . SOM usually refers to any metaphysical system that follows
> the distinction epitomised (though probably first recognized by the Ancient
> Greeks) by Descartes in what is called the Mind-Body distinction. This
> involves the division of a sentient being (such as a human being) into a Body
> (which is spatially extended) and a Mind (which is not).
>
> According to Pirsig, the stream of experience is "Quality", so by inference,
> Quality is the fundamental building block of the world. As immediate
> experience (or Quality) is in a continual changing flux, it would appear
> impossible to produce an exact definition of Quality. This is partly because
> by the time any complete definition would be stated (and it would have to take
> some time!) immediate experience would have subsequently changed so resulting
> in a consequent inaccuracy of such a definition.
>
> Pirsig also equates Quality with the Good. Therefore, he considers moral
> qualities to be as readily perceivable as any other. Hence, one of the
> defining characteristics of his work (as he draws attention to in "Lila") is
> that rather than dislocating morals from other fundamental studies, morals are
> just as readily derivable from our immediate experience as the natural
> sciences. The whole universe is perceived as being subject to a moral order.
>
> Pirsig considers that (what he terms) the scientific interpretation of reality
> is a generalisation derived from immediate experience.
>
> "The MOQ is truly empirical. Science is not. Classical science starts with a
> concept of the objective world - atoms and molecules - as the ultimate
> reality. This concept is certainly supported by empirical observation but it
> is not the empirical observation itself."
>
> The scientific view that is based on an objective world "out there" relies
> upon postulates that cannot be directly experienced and are, as such, less
> empirically pure than (and logically a posteriori) to the MOQ which starts at
> unmediated experience .
>
> Though there are no objects or subjects as traditionally thought of within the
> MOQ, for pragmatic reasons (i.e. it makes human existence much easier by
> employing concepts) Pirsig terms the continually changing flux of immediate
> reality "Dynamic Quality" while any concept abstracted from this flux is
> termed a pattern of "static quality" . It is important to keep in mind that
> "Dynamic Quality" is not a concept but only a referring term for immediate
> experience i.e.
>
> "The purpose of the description of 'Dynamic Quality' as 'the continually
> changing flux of immediate reality' is to block the notion that Dynamic
> Quality is some kind of object. To try to take that definition as some kind of
> philosophic object itself is to pervert the purpose for which the statement
> was intended."
>
> Dynamic Quality is useful as a term as it allows reference to "conceptual
> unknowns" (as implied by the physicist Niels Bohr) i.e. quantities that are
> ineffable whether, for example, in the context of mystical and aesthetic
> experiences or in the context of wave-particles in quantum mechanics . By
> "static quality" Pirsig isn't referring to anything that lacks movement in the
> Newtonian sense of the word but to any repeated arrangement whether it is
> "inorganic" (e.g. chemicals, quantum forces), "organic" (e.g. plants,
> animals), "social" (e.g. cities, ant nests) or "intellectual" (e.g. thoughts,
> ideas). Static quality is any pattern that appears long enough to be noticed
> within the flux of immediate experience (i.e. within Dynamic Quality) . As
> Pirsig's theory is pan-experiential, the experience referred to by "immediate
> experience" applies to any entity (be it a sub-atomic particle, plant, worm,
> human being etc.) that is derived from immediate experience.
>
> ********************************
> He goes on to take on the issue of time and evolution later in the essay.
>
> Below is the link.
> http://www.quantonics.com/Anthony_McWatts_MoQ_Paper.html
>
> Let me know if you have any questions or disagreements with Ant or of Pirsig.
>
> Rog
>
>
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