[MD] Metaphysical issues: DQ

[MarshaV]

dmb,

Great post!   Sounds like you're moving in a good direction.

Marsha


At 12:08 AM 10/13/2008, you wrote:


>Christoffer said:
>The Question we need to focus on here is "what should we say about 
>DQ in order to make the MOQ work best?" We want the MOQ to replace 
>old SOM as a metaphysical basis for human activity, and thus it is 
>of course crucial that the MOQ in no way I perceived as standing in 
>contrast to scientific understanding and method. And it won't do 
>that either, unless we start to talk too much about DQ. If we say 
>"DQ is that part of reality that we can't put into any kind of 
>static understanding" that works. Because when someone experiences 
>something new or invents something new (say Stephen Hawking finds a 
>new small thingie in some lab) we just say: "Oh, right - you took 
>something that before was DQ and incorporated it into our SQ 
>understanding. Good."
>
>dmb says:
>Actually, Hawking is a good picture of what's wrong with science. 
>He's like a mythical figure, a disembodied mind pondering a 
>mathematical universe that is indifferent to humanity. There is no 
>place for anything like DQ in such a scientific world view. What you 
>describe here as new experience or new inventions sounds a lot more 
>like an undiscovered fact. Such a scientific worldview is an 
>interpretation of the facts, a particular way to construe the data. 
>As I understand it, the data themselves are considered valid because 
>they are derived from experience but there is more than one way to 
>understand them. As you probably know, the idea of scientific 
>objectivity is one of the central problems that the MOQ addresses.
>
>The trick, I think, is to realize WHY the MOQ says that DQ can't be 
>defined, WHY we can assert the reality of DQ even though it can't be 
>captured in a static formula or otherwise pinned down.
>
>Chris said:
>Now, Krimel got angry at me for saying that DQ is constant, but the 
>reason I say that is because if we say DQ is some force or something 
>that swoops in and makes stuff happen, we will be at odds with 
>science, and we will have become mystics. If we however say that DQ 
>is the part of reality that - at any given moment at any given place 
>- hasn't been incorporated into SQ understanding - why then we 
>aren't at odds with anything.
>
>dmb says:
>Don't worry about Krimel. He and his anger are only virtually real. 
>He also tends to be scientistic and, as a result, fairly clueless 
>about the MOQ.
>
>I think its important to see that DQ can't be incorporated into a 
>static understanding, no matter when or where you are. And even more 
>importantly than that, the MOQ is a form of philosophical mysticism 
>and DQ is the mystical reality.
>
>"The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had 
>call 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. 
>Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without 
>definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience 
>independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions." (Lila, page 64)
>
>Because this Quality or value comes before anything else in 
>experience, Pirsig calls it "the primary empirical reality". (Lila, page 66)
>
>As the Pragmatist Dr. Sandra Rosenthal explains it, the Radical 
>Empiricists (James, Dewey, Pirsig) assert that this reality is too 
>thick, too rich, too overflowing to be captured in words or 
>concepts. Language, she says, is about the way we BREAK UP 
>experience into small, manageable packages. In doing so, we always 
>leave out most of that reality. That's why guys like Hawking seem so 
>precise and exact when they describe the universe in mathematical 
>equations; because the richness of all the details are left on the 
>editing room floor. To physicists and chemists, water is nothing but 
>H2O but such assertions forget to mention that water is experienced 
>as wet, cool, slippery, thirst-quenching, crop-saving, cleansing, 
>flowing, etc.. The felt quality of experience simply doesn't enter 
>into descriptions based on the periodic table of elements. It is in 
>this sense, I think, that science ignores value. And it is in this 
>sense that Quality is constantly known in all experience. It is no
>  t consistent, it is always new and changing, flowing and fluxing 
> but it is always at the front edge of every experience. The trick 
> is to attune yourself to those felt qualities. In that sense, 
> Pirsig's philosophical mysticism is MORE empirical than the empirical sciences.
>
>"Reality, which is value, is understood by every infant. It is a 
>universal starting place of experience that everyone is confronted 
>with all the time. Within a MOQ, science is a set of static 
>intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are 
>NOT the reality they describe." (Lila, page 103)
>
>Just driving by,
>dmb
>
>
>
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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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