[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[David M]

Hi Matt

That's reasonable. In the sense you are using interaction you are right.
I wonder of this may be worth discussing:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/faculty/sheehan/pdf/01-hd-wm.pdf

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 8:03 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig


> David, Kevin,
>
> Matt said earlier:
> If I'm using Heidegger's language correctly, Being and DQ are the
> ontological and beings and static patterns are the ontic.  If I'm reading
> you right, you're suggesting that the ontic, beings/static patterns,
> sometimes instead of staying within themselves, react to the ontological,
> Being/DQ, and in that way expand the range of the ontic.  What I don't 
> like
> is reading Being as being reacted to by beings, DQ by static patterns. 
> I'd
> prefer to say that beings react to each other, and in their expansion, in
> their creativity, they acheive Being.  Being and DQ represent creativity 
> and
> openness, but I don't think they represent another--and here's where the
> concepts we're using to start to muddy up--kind of being.
>
> I guess that's a good way of putting the way Heidegger and Pirsig 
> sometimes
> look to me (or at least Pirsig does).  It sometimes looks as if they 
> create
> two different ontological categories, being and Being, static patterns and
> Dynamic Quality.  I'm not sure what that's supposed to suggest other than 
> an
> appearance/reality type situation.  That being said, I can assume you'd
> respond that Heidegger creates the being/Being, ontic/ontological
> distinctions to try and evade that situation (and Pirsig himself, too, for
> that matter).  And I can appreciate that point.  But part of what I would
> take that point to be is that beings, ontic reality, static patterns don't
> _react_ to Being, ontological reality, DQ.  Reaction is something internal
> to ontic reality, static patterns, to that kind of being/reality.  It is
> intimating that these two kinds of reality interact to each other is what 
> I
> think creates a bad philosophical situation.
>
> David said:
> Not sure what you mean by interaction.  I think that the actual being open
> to the possible is an interaction of great significance, otherwise there
> would be no opening only eternal recurrence of the same. The unfolding or
> manifesting of the possible is a form of border crossing or extending, and
> where value manifests too.  We have the opportunity to select what we will
> manifest, all too clearly, a heaven or a hell
>
> Kevin said:
> I'd like to learn more about "this boundary between the actual and the
> possible, static patterns and DQ."  Why do you say there is no interaction
> between the actual or static and the possible or dynamic?
>
> Matt:
> I'm suggesting we shouldn't think of there being interaction between
> actual/static/ontic/beings and possible/Dynamic/ontological/Being solely
> because I'm trying to avoid the appearance/reality distinction.  I think 
> we
> can do so and still not have an "eternal recurrence" type situation.  As I
> see it, saying the two "areas" interact is analogous to saying you hear 
> the
> voice of God.  We'd like to know a couple things about it, like how do you
> know its the voice of God?
>
> Now, it wouldn't appear that there is anything we should be afraid of by
> saying the actual interacts with the possible.  There're no claims about
> moral superiority at stake or more real or anything like that (naturally 
> I'm
> putting aside Pirsig's terms for the moment to center on these morally
> neutral terms).  So, say they do.  The actual, when it expands itself,
> interacts with the possible.  When the actual simply interacts with 
> itself,
> it doesn't expand.  Now, how do we figure out _when_ the actual is
> expanding, when its interacting with the possible?  What are the signs?
> When something new occurs, right?  But how do we determine if this 
> something
> is new or not?  Do we compare it to the possible?  No, we can't do that
> because there's nothing there to compare it to.  If there were something
> there, it would be actual.  We determine newness by comparing it to other
> actuals.  If the comparison fails, we say the interaction must have only
> been between actuals.  If it succeeds, we say the interaction must have 
> been
> between the actual and the possible.  But if its only after comparing an
> actual to other actuals that we figure out whether or not it is new, and 
> we
> post facto call it an interaction with the possible, rather than an
> interaction between actuals, what role is this interaction between 
> possible
> and actual playing?  It can't be an explanatory role.  So what role is it
> playing in our descriptions?  What does it give us?  Why is it not a wheel
> spinning by itself, not doing any work?
>
> Well, first off, if it is a disconnected wheel, it seems to be a harmless
> wheel.  But second, David's suggesting that if we didn't have this wheel, 
> we
> wouldn't have newness, that the wheel does connect up somewhere.  I can
> agree there, the wheel does connect up somewhere.  But I don't think it
> helps anything to say that it connects up at that spot, by saying the 
> actual
> interacts with the possible.  I don't see that as adding anything.  I do,
> however, see the danger when we start pumping up the possible with other
> descriptions, like "all other things being equal, the possible is more 
> moral
> than the actual" (which is the DQ translation).  Then it becomes a lot 
> more
> important to be able to tell if we are interacting with the possible or 
> not.
>
> As I see it, the connection between actual and possible is simply that of
> life living.  What is here, right now, is actual and what is in the future
> is possible.  I'm not sure what more connection we need (after disposing 
> of
> the free will/determinism debate).  And this is kinda' like the image 
> Pirsig
> offers in ZMM of the train and the Quality track, which is then 
> transformed
> into his SODV picture of static patterns swimming in DQ.  If this is all
> that is meant by "interaction" then that seems fine to me.  When I think
> "interaction," I think of discernible relationships between two 
> somethings.
> But we can't have a relationship with the possible, DQ, or Being because 
> all
> three, under this reading, are synonymous with the Buddhist's Nothingness.
> They are no-thing, not a "something" at all, and so we shouldn't think of
> having relationships to them, at least not relationships or interactions
> that are at all analogous to the kinds of relationships we normally
> understand.  Because all those relationships and interactions are 
> something,
> actual, static, beings, ontic, etc. (as we proliferate terminology,
> extending indefinitely the amount of hook up we can establish between 
> Pirsig
> and others).
>
> Matt
>
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