[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Arlo:I think what Pirsig said is that only a "living being" can respond to DQ. Inorganic patterns seem so static (is the speed of light changing?), yet the exact same set of preconditions never present themselves a second time, so I think I am agreeing with you when I say that dynamic and static quality should still be applied to explain preferences on the inorganic level while the balance is decidedly for the static. ...The other comment I have is that I think the MOQ cosmology begins with radical empiricism rather than a big bang and evolution. ...Evolution is an idea and as such it is an aesthetic creation of humans. When we read DQ/sq back on to evolution and to the responses to quality of animals and rocks and trees and even other people, we have less of an empirical basis for talking about such things. It is Pirsig's evolutionary theory. It is an idea that either holds up to rational discourse or not, while Experience = Quality and DQ/sq are axioms that are either found worth accepting or not.dmb says:I think that's right. Bravo.If the evolutionary cosmology is taken for reality itself, as opposed to a set of intellectual descriptions, the MOQ will be misconstrued as a kind re-arranged version of the metaphysics of substance. The levels of static patterns agree with the present scientific understanding so we can talk about the big bang, the evolution of life and cultural development in Pirsigian terms, but in the MOQ reality is equated with experience, not any particular ontology or cosmology. Because reality is equated with experience, the epistemology comes first. Or maybe it would be better to say the epistemology replaces the ontology. As you rightly point out, this is where the importance of Radical Empiricism comes into it. I was surprised to learn that Carl Jung's conception of the collective unconscious is one that goes all the way down to the inorganic level too. I think there might be some problems with his theory that could be solved by a bigger dose of radical empiricism, but his conception can be used, I think, to help us imagine what Pirsig means in saying that we are a collection of static patterns from all levels and that we're capable of responding to DQ, in saying the MOQ agrees with the mystic's claim that  "Thou Art That", in saying that the subjective self is the little self as opposed to the Dynamic Big Self and all those sorts of things. Somehow I got the wrong idea about the collective unconscious. I thought it was limited to social patterns, to put it in MOQese. The myths and archetypal heros and all that stuff is certainly part the unconscious but, according to Jung, it goes all the way down. In his view, we are born with the collective unconscious. We are the very opposite of a blank slate. We inherit the whole evolutionary history of the universe in our unconscious. And he distinguished the ego, or normal waking consciousness, from the Great Self. In the same way that the ego is the center of consciousness, the Self is the center of the total self, which includes the not only the ego but also the personal unconscious and the deeper collective unconscious. And for Jung, psychological health demands that the ego integrate the unconscious mind. For Jung, this integration process is called individuation. This is the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell made famous. For Jung, the process of individuation is a process of becoming whole, healthy, holy. Or as Pirsig puts it, reality is the undivided immediate flux of experience and to fully realize this lack of division is become enlightened.Thanks.
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