[MD] When is a pattern not static?

[MarshaV]

DMB,

Great post!  It reminds me that I should try to listen to the Dewey 
book again.

Marsha



At 03:33 PM 2/15/2008, you wrote:

>Ham said:
>This may be a silly question, and I know it's been discussed before, 
>but I have always been confused about Pirsig's use of "static" for 
>S/O patterns and "dynamic" for the Quality that supports them.  And 
>I suspect that I'm not alone in this confusion.  I've been told that 
>DQ is dynamic because it gives rise to patterns (or at least 
>encompasses them), but that doesn't seem to properly describe the 
>unchanging foundational Quality, or the fact that most patterns are 
>experienced as changing or evolving in some away.
>
>Steve replied:
>This is an interesting question. I don't think we should make too 
>much of dynamic/static as changing versus staying the same. I think 
>that in the phrase "static patterns of value" static is redundant, 
>static just means patterned as in "analogues upon analogues." 
>Dynamic means unpatterned but to just say that could confuse it with 
>chaos. Dynamic quality isn't chaos but rather pure experience 
>unfiltered through a web of analogues.
>
>dmb says:
>It might help to look at the difference between Ham's unchanging 
>foundation and Steve's unfiltered experience. I think Ham's 
>confusion is a consequence of trying to understand Dynamic Quality 
>as some kind of foundational reality, as something that exists on 
>its own apart from experience, as if DQ were a simple substitute for 
>SOM's objective reality or Kant's things-in-themselves. But in the 
>MOQ, experience IS reality and the terms "static" and "dynamic" both 
>characterize experience. William James also used these terms to 
>characterize experience. As he put it, experience is like the 
>movements of a bird, full of flights and perchings. Dewey's work in 
>art and aesthetics gets at this idea pretty well too. All three of 
>these guys (Pirsig, James and Dewey) are radical empiricists and 
>they're all looking closely and critically at SOM. It's no good 
>trying to understand static and dynamic without first understanding that.
>
>Dewey's distinction between recognition and perception might be 
>helpful here. For Dewey, "recognition" is something like static 
>quality and "perception" is dynamic. "The difference between the two 
>is immense", he says in his ART AS EXPERIENCE. "Recognition is 
>perception arrested before it has a chance to develop freely." "In 
>recognition we fall back as upon a stereotype, upon some previously 
>formed scheme. Some detail or arrangement of details serves as cue 
>for bare identification. It suffices in recognition to apply this 
>bare outline as a stencil to the present object". "Bare recognition 
>is satisfied when a proper tag or label is attached, 'proper' 
>signifying one that serves a purpose outside the act of recognition 
>- as a salesman identifies wares by a sample." Sadly, says Dewey, 
>these "non-esthetic" kinds of experience are so common and pervasive 
>"that unconsciously they come to be taken as norms of all 
>experience. Then, when the esthetic appears, it so sharply contrasts wi
>  th the picture that has been formed of experience, that it is 
> impossible to combine its special qualities with the features of 
> the picture and the esthetic is given an outside place and status."
>
>Its worth pointing out that for Dewey the aesthetic experience is 
>not confined to the fine arts. He talks about the aesthetic 
>experience of a thinker and a moral actor, for example. Just as in 
>the MOQ, any kind of experience could count as dynamic - hearing a 
>new song, formulating a hypothesis, fixing a bike or getting your 
>life turned upside down by a storm. In this case it refers to a high 
>degree of engagement, a heightened sensitivity to whatever is being 
>experienced. When "perception replaces bare recognition 
>...consciousness becomes fresh and alive". Dewey even uses words 
>like "care" and "love" to characterize the flavor and intensity of 
>involvement that this entails. And interestingly, he says that the 
>artist is guided by unifying "quality" that is neither capricious 
>nor routine. The artist or thinker selects and shapes her material 
>through the entire process on the basis this quality, by "whatever 
>carries the idea forward". In fact, he says, this level of engagement is
>   always felt as "emotional and guided by purpose". This feeling is 
> so inherent and integral to the aesthetic experience, says Dewey, 
> that "there is, therefore, no such thing in perception as seeing or 
> hearing PLUS emotion". He's careful to spell out that this is not 
> "emotion" in the conventional sense. I think he's talking about 
> what Pirsig would call "quality" or "value". As Dewey points out, 
> the dynamic has given it "an outside place and status". So we 
> hardly know what to call it or how to talk about it. But these guys 
> put it at the center of things, despite our culture's blind spot to it.
>
>Thanks,
>dmb
>
>
>
>
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