[MD] LC Comments

[david buchanan]

Magnus said to Dan:
Of course the MoQ isn't reality itself, it's an intellectual pattern that describes reality in much the same way a physical formula does.
 
However, in the same way a physical formula does its best to reflect how physics will behave given certain preconditions, so will also the MoQ do its best to reflect how reality will behave.

So, just as it is silly to assume that there *isn't* a sun that is shining over us every day, that it's somehow just a grand illusion, it's equally silly to assume that the levels doesn't have any real correspondence in reality.


dmb says:

Well, no. I think it's very important to understand that getting rid of this idea of correspondence to reality is part of getting rid of SOM. As Pirsig puts it, "Unlike subject-object metaphysics the MOQ does not insist on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of things - that which corresponds to the 'objective' world - all all other constructions are unreal." in fact, the idea of objective truth and what's commonly called the "correspondence theory of truth" are the same thing. By contrast, the MOQ subscribes to the Pragmatic theory of truth, which is a form of empiricism and is woven together with radical empiricism. On this view, truth has to agree with experience, it has to function within experience but the notion that our ideas have to correspond with an objective reality is ditched. As you know, the metaphysical premise behind that truth theory is rejected. In the MOQ, subjects and objects are not "the ultimate reality". As Pirsig puts it, 

"Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he [William James] described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.' In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience [DQ] cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically precedes this distinction." (Lila, p.364-5)

Now, think about "the sun" as an object and "us" as the subjects over which it shines. These are secondary. They are derived from something more fundamental. See, Pirsig is not denying the primary empirical reality from which we have derived our concept of "the sun", he's just saying that the object, the big hot chuck of matter we imagine is a concept. It's a good concept most of the time but we also know that it's still got a lot of old ghosts attached to it. I mean, scientifically speaking it no longer makes sense to say it shines "over" us. Like sunrise and sunset, the idea that the sun goes up and down, or across the sky, are all concepts left over from a geocentric model of the solar system. And of course old SOL used to be a god. Concepts of the sun come and go, but that feeling of warmth on a face remains the same. Lizards are warmed in the morning no matter what we say about the sun, regardless of whether we worship it as a deity or study it as a physical feature of this particular galaxy. The word might also conjure up visions of tropical beaches, bikinis, the fortune of farmers and the fate of desert travelers. My point is simply that "the sun" does not correspond to any particular experience and what we call the "sun" is experienced many different ways in many different contexts, in different times and cultures and they all can agree with experience as it is known and had even if the concepts derived and used vary widely and contradict each other. The experience is primary and the concepts are secondary. On this view, the "ultimate reality" is this primary experience itself. 


You see? He was saying the same thing in ZAMM, even though he never even mentioned James or radical empiricism.


"In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues reality. And they ARE reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that the ARE reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an insane asylum. That which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it." (ZAMM, p. 251, emphasis is Pirsig's)

"That's what he meant when he said, 'Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.' ...Men invent RESPONSES to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It HAS to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues." (ZAMM, p. 351. Emphasis is Pirsig's.)



Thanks,
dmb 		 	   		  
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