[MD] Static latching & faith

[Ant McWatt]

David M stated April 22nd:

>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


David,

Many thanks for saying so.

As none of the examiners had a spare one, I'll put your gold star on my PhD!

Best wishes,

Anthony.



----- 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)

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN Search Toolbar now includes Desktop search! 
http://join.msn.com/toolbar/overview