[MD] Static latching & faith

[Ant McWatt]

Ant quoted Pirsig April 17th:

"Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality
succeeds where Bradley's Absolute and Hegel's Being and the
Buddhist Nothingness and the Hindu Oneness and the theists' God
and Allah and you-name-it; all of them fail.  For Quality, no faith is
required because there is no way you can disbelieve that there is
such a thing as Quality. You cannot conceive of or live in a world in
which nothing is better than anything else." (Pirsig's Copleston 
Annotations, 2000, p.216)

Ham commented April 19th:

>That faith is not required for an understanding of Quality is, in my
>opinion, an arguable statement proffered by the author in lieu of a
>metaphysical exposition to support his theory.  To claim that "Quality 
>succeeds" where religion and other philosophies fail is pure hyperbole.


Ham,

Good to hear from you.  A reasonably standard metaphysical exposition to 
support the MOQ is given in Section 2.3 of my PhD.  This was closely 
scrutinised by Pirsig (as well as my PhD examiners) and is summarised 
towards the end of 2.3 in the following:

“To recap then, the MOQ is a claim that descriptions of the world are learnt 
and are secondary to the experience of value (in the sense of being better 
or worse).  It is a claim that one can not explain the workings of the human 
world without reference to values; that, for instance, you can’t even get 
out of bed in the morning before deciding (consciously or unconsciously) 
that it is better to do so.  Subjects and objects (such as ‘stoves’, ‘heat’, 
‘oaths’ and ‘self’) are, at least initially, useful (or valuable) details.  
For Pirsig, these conscious analogues are identified as static patterns of 
value because (through the connection between the past and present) these 
patterns have a cognitive significance that enables us to make sense of a 
changing (if occasionally uncomfortable) Dynamic experience.  It should be 
noted therefore that this claim moves the MOQ out of idealist premises 
because Pirsig does not hold that ideas exist prior to everything else and 
also out of materialist premises as Pirsig holds that descriptions are 
dependent primarily on value, not a physical reality.”

“We have a culturally inherited blind spot here.  Our culture teaches us to 
think it is the hot stove that directly causes the oaths.  It teaches that 
the low values are a property of the person uttering the oaths.  Not so.  
The value is… more immediate, more directly sensed than any ‘self’ or any 
‘object’ to which it might be later assigned.  It is… the primary empirical 
reality from which such things as stoves and heat and oaths and self are 
later intellectually constructed.”   (Pirsig, LILA, 1991, p.69)

>Hegel remains one of the most respected thinkers in philosophical history.

So does the Buddha.

>And if religion is a failure, why has its ranks increased in our nihilistic
>age to the extent that it has become a political football?

Because people always want the easy safe answers?  Because they are scared 
of death?  Because they are brainwashed by their parents, media, school and 
politicians to view the world a certain way?  Or, possibly, which I think is 
a better reason, because they don’t realise there’s an alternative such as 
the MOQ?

>Indeed, how is it that the faith demonstrated by a handful of religious 
>fanatics managed to involve the Western World in a war against Islamic 
>fascism?

Well, on your side of the Atlantic someone keeps voting Bush and his neo-con 
friends into power!!!!  On this side, in 2003, Blair – as leader of the 
Labour Party – took us into an illegal war and then ignored the largest ever 
mass demonstration to be held in this country (which at least finally 
revealed the illusion of British democracy if nothing else).  However, the 
real issue is oil and the West’s increased reliance on supplies which are 
due to diminish.  The British have been invading Iraq since the First World 
War for its oil and this is the primary reason for all the major wars the 
British have been involved in since 1914 (bet you don’t read that in your 
media).   I don’t know what kind of world we would have had if the Europeans 
and their American offshoot had just taken advice of the Tao Te Ching and 
just stayed at home (gardening?) over the last 800 years but I think it 
would have been a considerably more beautiful, unpolluted and peaceful place 
(if technically less developed).

Moreover, I suppose most Fundamentalists (Islamic or Christian) don’t stop 
to question critically what to believe or think (for instance, how many 
school children or college kids take philosophy in Islamic and Christian 
schools?) and aren’t aware of the messages being conveyed to them 
subliminally by their governments and mass media etc (hence the 
“common-sense” assumptions that psychedelics – which disrupt subliminal 
messages - are bad or hypnotism is not normal or even “supernatural”) and, 
of course, there’s always social pressure to conform with the majority.

>It is patently clear from the contributors to this forum that there is not
>one but many "understandings of Quality", some of which contradict those of
>Mr. Pirsig himself.

Well, between you and me, just read David Buchanan’s posts and you want go 
far wrong in developing a good understanding of the MOQ.  :-)   Seriously, 
there’s no unanimous agreement between theoretical physicists either and yet 
their field still has value.  Likewise, the fact you continue to contribute 
here must mean you are gaining something of value from this forum and, 
anyway, it would be a rather dull place if everyone agreed with everybody 
else about everything that the MOQ might or not entail.

>Begging the question only makes the Quality of belief
>seem somewhat strained.

Unlike (intellectual) values (such as truth), Pirsig thinks that terms such 
as ‘patterns of God’ or ‘emptiness’ can be dismissed in the explanations of 
reality provided by modern physics without the risk of contradiction.

“When a scientifically oriented mind hears the term ‘substance’ it says, 
‘that’s reality.’  When it hears about ‘oneness’ and ‘nothingness’ it says, 
‘That’s just empty, meaningless, metaphysical claptrap for the “Mind of God” 
which we have already rejected for empirical reasons.  Scientifically those 
words have no meaning.’  The term ‘quality’ is superior to ‘oneness’ and 
‘nothingness’ because it is impossible for scientists to reject as 
metaphysical religious claptrap.  They try, but they cannot get away with 
saying there are no values in the world.”  (Pirsig, 1995d, “A Critical 
Analysis of the MOQ” by Anthony McWatt, p.71)

Ant had quoted the following:

"I think it is extremely important to emphasize that
the MOQ is pure empiricism.   There is nothing
supernatural in it."  (Pirsig, 2000e in "A Critical
Analysis of the MOQ" by Anthony McWatt, p.50)

>If the MOQ is pure empiricism, Quality would be a fact rather than a 
>belief.

That’s absolutely correct.  As Northrop (“Logic of the Sciences & 
Humanities”, 1947, pp. 39-42) confirms:

“Pure fact may be defined as that which is known by immediate apprehension 
alone. It is that portion of our knowledge which remains when everything 
depending upon inference from the immediately apprehended is rejected.  
Strictly speaking, as has been previously noted, we can say nothing about 
pure fact, since the moment we put in words what it is, we have described 
fact rather than merely observed fact. Nevertheless, we can use words to 
denote it, providing we realize that these words are concepts by intuition 
which require us to find in the immediacy of our undescribed experience, 
what the words mean.”

“But to recognize this is to learn a great deal about the character of pure 
fact. Words point it out; by themselves they do not convey it. This means 
that pure fact must be immediately experienced to be known. At least its 
elementary constituents cannot be conveyed by symbols to anyone who has not 
experienced them. But to say this is to affirm that pure fact is ineffable 
in character. For the ineffable is that which cannot be said, but can only 
be shown, and even then only to one who immediately experiences it.”

“Furthermore, since ineffability is the defining property of the mystical, 
it follows that the purely factual, purely empirical, positivistic component 
in human knowledge is the mystical factor in knowledge. The pure empiricists 
are the mystics of the world, as the Orientals, who have tended to restrict 
knowledge to the immediately experienced, clearly illustrate….”

“The belief that there is a material table with constant, right-angle 
corners existing as an external object, independent of our sense impressions 
of it, is not given by sense awareness alone, even when one is immediately 
apprehending these sense impressions. For all that immediate apprehension or 
mere observation gives is what one's senses convey to one.  And clearly, all 
that the senses convey are colors and sounds and odors, pains and pleasures. 
These are not external material objects.  They are ineffable, aesthetic 
qualities, the kind of thing which the impressionistic artist rather than 
the physicist gives one. Thus again we come to the same conclusion. Pure 
fact is a continuum of ineffable aesthetic qualities, not an external 
material object.”

“Consequently, if one prefers to be thoroughly hard-boiled with respect to 
one's beliefs, rejecting all inference and theory as belonging to 
soft-minded speculative philosophers sitting in arm chairs, and if one forth 
with proposes to restrict oneself to facts only, then it is not with the 
belief in external material objects or the other persons of common sense, or 
with the electrons, protons, electromagnetic waves and other unobservable 
scientific objects of the physicist that one can have anything to do. For 
all these common-sense and scientific objects are theoretically inferred 
objects; they are not purely empirically given, immediately apprehended 
facts. Instead, it is to impressionistic art with nothing but its sense 
impressions that one must restrict oneself.”

“In short, were the supposedly hard-minded empiricist really to understand 
what he would be left with were he to reject all theory and restrict himself 
to pure fact, and were he then really to practice what he so glibly 
preaches, he would turn out to be, not the hard-boiled fellow he prides 
himself on being, but a very sensitive aesthetic dilettante, savoring 
flavors and fragrances and sensuous images in their ineffable immediacy and 
letting all solid natural objects go.”

No doubt also the kind of “hard-minded empiricist” who would have an 
interest in East Asian mysticism or take a trip across the United States and 
later write about his experiences in the context of discussing the ineffable 
aesthetic continuum!

>Whenever "belief" is used to characterize a concept or theory, faith is 
>inferred.

You are either begging the question by assuming that some kind of 
supernatural element is involved the rational process or you are using a 
different definition of faith than the one used by the Catholic Church i.e.  
the 1992 “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, paragraph 153 states: “Faith is 
a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him”.

>While Pirsig is pleased to assert that "there is nothing supernatural in 
>[the MOQ]", not a few of his readers consider this a deficiency.

Possibly a lot more readers would consider it an advantage.

>I would ask why the author didn't see a need to discredit supernaturalism 
>philosophically or logically, rather than simply exclude the MOQ from it.

I presume because the “author” had more important things to be concerned 
with though the MOQ is an attempt to remove superstitious nonsense without 
losing the mystery of the ineffable aesthetic continuum.  You could call it 
not throwing the “No-thingness” baby out with the religious superstition/new 
age “bath water” in order to offer our “nihilistic” Western culture a 
solution to the “values problem” which doesn’t require membership of some 
religious group, the rejection of technology, an emphasis on material 
acquisition nor contradict the discoveries of modern science.

Best wishes,

Anthony.


www.robertpirsig.org

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