[MD] David M and DMB clearly disagree -what do others think?

[David M]

Hi Matt

Nice to hear from you. See comments below.

David M


> I doubt DMB would deny that the possible is real, as you're saying David,
> but just insofar as its properly explicated.  I see what you're trying to
> suggest, and how it highlights a weakness in SOM, but whatever 
> redescription
> we use still need to be able to capture the contrast between possible and
> actual, which is why, I gather, DMB is protesting.

DM: Well let's see what DMB says because I thought he was denying
the possible is real. Of course, we still need to distinguish the actual and
the possible but I am suggesting it is not a distinction between real and
unreal. I think past/future is closely related to actual/possible or 
potential.
I also think the possible is clearly key to experience when we look
at practical and agentive behaviour/experience and get away from the
SOM tendency to stare in passive observation. When we are engaged
in hammering nails into wood the wood/nails/hammer are all experienced
in terms of the potential changes they are participating in -in terms of 
process.
We experience process and environment in a real historical context and a 
real
context of what is possible. Whilst there is a pre-reflective portion that 
helps
create the experience of a banana, there is a portion that reflects what we
have experienced of bananas before, and what we anticipate it is possible
to do with a banana (and I know some of you kinky types don't just eat 
them).

I think the easiest way
> to try and explain your point is to suggest that by saying that "the
> possible is real" you're saying the same thing against the tradition that
> Pirsig was suggesting with DQ and it's relation to Whitehead's "dim
> apprehension."

DM: Yes & I think it should help us with our concept of DQ. But 
interestingly
the possible can be differentiated and turned into SQ. We can explore
the content of the possible, makenew discoveries, and use this to create
new SQ in the actual too. Is this not what we mean by creativity? Sometimes
we can form something possible and intentionally make it actual, other times
the possible bursts into the actual spontaneously. Such is perhaps the 
difference
between intellectual/intentional creation and spontaneous emergence.

>
> As I see it, the muddy water is occuring around what it means to "know," 
> as
> when DMB says, "I think a person has to torture logic and the english
> language in order to make a case that 'the possible' is a real thing that 
> we
> can know in experience."  I'd first remind DMB that Pirsig tortured logic
> with his Quality and that torture alone is not an indication of regression
> or badness.  I'm not sure if David mentioned knowing and knowledge in his
> excursus on "the possible," but DMB is bringing in "what we can know" to
> curb "what is real," such that, because the possible is, by conventional
> definition what we don't know because it hasn't happened yet, it isn't 
> real.

DM: Yes and no. Because we can know the possible and intentionally
bring it about but yes the possible is infinite and in the main unknown.
But we can explore and know the possible and we can sometimes
bring about what we value. But yes making the possible into the actual
is tough stuff and often fails, and yes the possible generally emerges as
actual without us being able to influence it. Science is a form of such
control of the possible to bring about what we value.


>
> It isn't hard to see how curbing "the real" with "what we can know" can 
> get
> out of hand and turn into SOM--such a formulation is how the tradition
> curbed out values from reality.  The solution that Pirsig attempts is to
> expand our notion of reality, which thereby also expands our notion of 
> what
> counts as knowledge, "what we know."

DM: Yes, we know the actual by experiencing the shared world of space-time,
experiencing the possible is not shaped by space, time to some extent, and 
is
experienced in the un-shared sphere, we call this our inner sphere. But the 
actual
is experienced in the context of the possible. That's why I might bet on the 
first
horse and you will bet on the second one. We know something about the 
future,
a horse will win the race, we differ about which one we think will win. You
cannot experience the reality of the race without it being in the context of 
different
possible outcomes. This is basic phenomenological analysis, as I've said 
before,
it is a very good way of making sense of Pirsig, and enriching and extending 
the
analysis he only makes a start on (I say this because experience is very 
rich
and there is muchmuch more to understand/describe than Pirsig covers).

>
> I'm not saying DMB _is_ regressing, but that is, I think, the point on
> which it hangs.  I think there is an obvious, commonsensical sense that 
> DMB
> is right to defend, the idea that we don't _know_ the future (as, for
> instance, against seers), but I think David might be playing around with a
> different, broader sense of "know."

DM: Yes we can know and discuss the possible but the process by which it
becomes actual is dynamic and laregly beyond our control. But there can
be control, creation, ordering.

>
> Who's supporting the MoQ?  Both.  To use the MoQ with any kind of 
> efficiency
> requires you to move back and forth between common sense (which, as Pirsig
> tells us, has some Platonism/SOM built into it currently) and
> counterintuitive philosophical formulations with a fair amount of
> agility--good static patterns of the past with breaking the static 
> patterns,
> with the hope that they are Dynamic and not degenerate.

DM: Yes, the move to retain actual=only real has some use, but rejecting it
to make real=possible+past+actual uncovers other aspects of reality. I like
to think that my slogan "it's all real, but what kind of real" helps to 
avoid creating distinctions merely
to suppress one half -as Derrida would only then come along and deconstruct 
this,
well his ghost anyway.

regards
David M