[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[david buchanan]

Krimel said:
... I think DQ and SQ correspond exactly to Yang and Yin. The point you seem to miss is that dividing the world is not mandatory.

dmb says:

I think Yin and Yang represent all the pairs of opposites, which means all our conceptualizations. So I think Yin and Yang are both static. The Tao, the whole circle, includes them both and yet it is beyond all the pairs of opposites. Just like Quality itself, that's why it can't be named. Also, the world as we know it is one analogy upon another, one ghost upon another and so whole thing is made up of such divisions. I mean, the analytic knife has to cut somewhere so that even the DQ/sq distinction counts as a pair of opposites. The MOQ makes that cut as the first move in a larger system but that system also says that such intellectual divisions are always secondary to the whole circle.


Krimel said:

Concepts according to James are the discrete units that we use to cut up our continuous experience into manageable units, words, ideas, communicable patterns of thought. This distinction between discrete and continuous I would say is a metaphysical cut of the sort that Pirsig talks about in Lila. It has some correspondence with Yin/Yang and SQ/DQ and I think it could be argued that it has played at least as important a role in the development of western civilization as the S/O, mind/matter spilt.


dmb says:

That's not too far off but the distinction between discrete and continuous is not exactly a "metaphysical" cut. The difference is known and felt in experience and so the claim is not just based on experience, it is a claim about experience itself. It is also true that Pirsig and James construct philosophical doctrines on that premise, but the premise itself is not really a doctrine. It's an observation. I think it's important to point this out because they're both very much interested in eliminating metaphysical fictions like the Absolute, Objective reality and the Cartesian subject. They want philosophy to move out of the armchair and into the streets. It's about engaged action in the stream of life and so empirical in a essential way, you know? Experience takes priority over everything because Pirsig has the nerve to ask corny old bad questions like, "what's the best way to live" and "what's right and true and good"? The answer is that you can't put that in terms of a propositional sentence. Truth is right up there at the top but it's still smaller than life. That's where DQ comes in. That's what the West has been missing, mostly. 



Krimel said:
...Quality is continuous. "Quality" is discrete. Pirsig makes this pretty clear when he talks about mystics being concerned with Quality and having distain for the metaphysicians concern with "Quality".


dmb says:

That's right. That's one of the reasons I like James's analogy wherein concepts are buckets of water taken from the stream of experience. As soon as we fill the bucket, the water takes on the shape of the container. It's made of the same stuff as the stream and yet the flow is gone and the borders are stable. And of course you need that kind of stability if you want to construct a metaphysics or just order a pizza.


Think of Quality in terms of evolution. How long did our ancestors respond and survive before the emergent of conceptual thought? Well, in some sense this ability goes back to the very beginning of life itself, not just primates or rodents or something with a cute face. So it wouldn't be wrong to say we have billions of years of practice at using non-conceptual awareness in the ongoing process of life. You don't have to be a Jungian to believe we've inherited this evolved wisdom. You'd probably like to think of it as a kind of "biological intelligence". In any case, there are unconscious processes by which we evaluate and respond and despite the fact that it is not deliberate or rationally decided, it's impossible to function without it. 

And if you can't function normally without "it", you can bet that "it" is NOT a metaphysical fiction. I don't think it would be wise to REDUCE Quality to biological intelligence. I think it's actually a biological response to Quality rather than Quality itself, but you get the idea.

 		 	   		  
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