[MD] Static latching & faith

[David M]

Hi Ant

Very useful post thanks. Nice to know that you don't neglect your
history too. Help yourself to a nice gold star.

DM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ant McWatt" <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 4:49 PM
Subject: [MD] Static latching & faith


> 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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