[MD] The MOQ and religions.

[Ham Priday]

Hi again, Marsha --


> I am not sure I understand what you are stating.  I am calling
> unpatterned experience or direct experience, as I understand,
> maybe mistakenly, Ant's quote to suggest, experience without
> patterns of interpretation.  The MoQ has the experience (value)
> coming before the projection of the observer and the object,
> and I find that one need not necessarily project them at all.

I seem to be having difficulty explaining "experience" to you and John. 
Perhaps it is the special meaning of "pattern" or "direct experience" used 
by the Pirsigians that impedes your understanding.

> I choose 'unpatterned experience' as not to embellish the
> experience in any way.

"Embellishing the experience" is not the problem, Marsha.  There is no such 
thing as "generic experience", anyway.  That is, you can't have an 
experience of a "general nature."  That's like being "generally" alive or 
"generally" pregnant.   Each and every experience is the awareness of a 
particular phenomenon.  The problem is that what has been called "direct 
experience (of Value)" is a misnomer.  We do not "experience" absolute or 
undifferentiated value.  All experience is directly delineated, immanent, 
and relative to the subjective self.

The apple on the kitchen table is a visual phenomenon.  It is the objective 
representation (subjective "interpretation") of personal values that relate 
to your esthetic or gustatory sensibilities. These are all "immediately 
aware" to you upon observing the apple.  When you bite into the apple, you 
have another experience.  The sweetness or tartness, texture and succulence 
of the apple are the "qualia" you experience proprioceptively (internally) 
as you eat it.  Your experience of the apple and its composite attributes 
are, I believe, what Pirsig means by a "pattern of Quality".  But the 
pattern does not exist until you experience it, which is why he calls 
experience "the cutting edge of reality."  It is the individual's 
value-sensibility that actualizes the object by experiencing it 
differentially.  The cumulative experience of an individual's 
being-in-the-world is that individual's existential reality.

Now, the example Pirsig gives of "direct" or "pre-intellectual" experience 
is the pain one feels when sitting on a hot stove   This is a proprioceptive 
response to physiological injury.  If you are the stove-sitter, you feel the 
burning of your behind; no one else does.  Otherwise, there is no difference 
between internally felt and externally objectivized experiences

The fact that an experience may or may not involve "intellect" is irrelevant 
to this epistemology.  I suppose my enjoyment of a Tchaikovsky symphony 
involves some intellectual activity, whereas eating an apple doesn't.  But 
so what?  It's still an experience -- or, in Pirsig's terms, a Quality 
pattern.

If this doesn't make the epistemology clearer, tell me where you think the 
problem lies.

Thanks, Marsha.

--Ham

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

>> On Dec 28, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Marsha V. wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings Ham,
>>>
>>> Can there be experience _without_ picking up the thread of
>>> mental chatter or an analytical thread?  Yes!   Ant's statement
>>> is perfect.  Perfect.  Perfect.  Perfect.  It seems more a matter
>>> of awareness of such experiences.
>>>
>>> "Immediate experience is experience where there is no distinction
>>> between what is experienced and the act of experiencing itself."
>>> -- [Anthony McWatt: Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality]
>>
>> What you redundantly praise as "perfect" is the fact that Ant's statement 
>> applies to ALL experience.  The "immediate" act of experience and the 
>> awareness of something are one and the same phenomenon.  Likewise, being 
>> aware is contingent upon a cognizant observer and a referent object. 
>> Experiential reality is a dualism of value-sensibility (subjective 
>> awareness) and objectivized being (otherness).
>>
>> You'll note that Pirsig and I agree that the ground of_existence_is Value 
>> (Quality).  But value-sensibility is_our_essence, not the Essence of 
>> Reality.  We do not "experience" Value directly.  Value must be realized 
>> (made sensible) by an independent agent in order to exist (to be 
>> experienced as finite phenomena).  And, since Existence is differentiated 
>> from Value in the "act" or process of experience, Existence and Essence 
>> are not synomous.
>>
>> Pirsig's "metaphysics" never transcended existence.  His Quality 
>> hierarchy is based entirely on the experiential (phenomenal) realm 
>> Euphemizing physical existence as experienced patterns of Dynamic Quality 
>> does not eliminate subject/object duality.
>>
>> Thanks, Marsha.  And best wishes for the new year,
>> Ham
>>
>> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>>
>>> Epistemologically, experience is clearly both an "act" (which is itself
>>> differentiated) and the cognizant awareness of "distinctions" or 
>>> patterns.
>>> I call experience the process of "objectivizing", and I distinguish it 
>>> from
>>> value-sensibility which is primary to experience and esthetic or
>>> emotional (rather than "intellectual") in nature.  Unfortunately, MoQ's
>>> author failed to make this distinction.
>>>
>>> But more important to philosophy, I think, is the concept that existence
>>> is a differentiated reality in which All is perceived as "each and 
>>> every"
>>> by a subject in relation to its object(s).  Every moment, every 
>>> experience,
>>> every thought, every idea is differentiated from every other.  And the
>>> substantive ground of this reality is the Value from which we are each
>>> estranged at birth.  We can experience and know only what we construct
>>> from this Value -- good, bad, or indifferent.
>>>
>>> Yet, the fact that this pluralistic construction is not chaotic but has 
>>> an order
>>> (or "intelligence", if you will) that is universally apprehended and 
>>> appreciated
>>> strongly implies a creative source that transcends all difference and 
>>> otherness.
>>> Although Mr. Pirsig would like us to think of this source as DQ, I 
>>> cannot
>>> accept Quality as an absolute.  Quality for me is only the valuistic 
>>> "realization"
>>> of otherness, and it requires a sensible agent.  We are all "One in 
>>> Essence".
>>> The source I propose is uncreated, unconditional, and beyond experience.
>>> It is the essential "not-other" from which the appearance of otherness 
>>> is derived.
>>>
>>> Essentially yours,
>>> Ham