[MD] Metaphysical issues: DQ

[Christoffer Ivarsson]

>Re: Metaphysical issues: DQ (david buchanan)

[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]
I am indeed talking more about undiscovered facts, but still, everything is 
Quality - and even thoug science has a problem, a big one, with not 
realizing that it is confined within it's own set of rules, those rules are 
HIGH Quality rules. And, I don't know,  I still think it stands to reason 
that when we discover something new about reality, even thooug it is from a 
limited point of view, that is still understanding more of Quality (since 
reality = Quality).

[DMB]
Because this Quality or value comes before anything else in experience, 
Pirsig calls it "the primary empirical reality". (Lila, page 66)

[Chris]
Indeed, Indeed. But everything we do is dependant on the composition of our 
stable patterns of Quality, that much must be true. If we think about it, it 
stands to reason, that if humans evolved into a higher species, and 
developed all new ways of sensing Quality, the DQ would not be any 
different, but we would respond to it, and "understand" it better. I'm not 
disputing that the primary experience is Quality, but that really doesn't 
matter in any meaningful way other than in relation to how we interpret that 
first experience.

[DMB]
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.

[Chris]
Agreed, Agreed, Agreed.  We talked a lot about language today. Math was 
considered a language, and of course conventional language, music was in 
doubt. I said that everything could be seen as languages, more or less 
rigid, saying things about reality in different ways. And music, music is 
perhaps a language that is far less rigid then other language, and thus it 
can explore far more aspects of reality than any other language, but since 
it by nature is far less rigid than the others, it sometimes fails in 
mediating. That's no problem though, because it's function is to be closer 
to the dynamic aspect of reality, ideally, just like art, and give us more 
impressions of it.

A great post dmb, I thank you. I don't think we are too much in 
disagreement, and when I say DQ is constant, I believe you understand, and 
the only thing we need to concern ourselves about is how WE experience it. I 
do believe evolution is going towards more and more Q-understanding,  and so 
that's all we are ever doing.

Regards
Chris