[MD] Social Intellectual

[MarshaV]

On Jul 24, 2010, at 3:56 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> dmb said to Marsha:
> Part of the problem is that you define static patterns as ever-changing. That's like defining stable to mean unstable. It's just plainly wrong. There is DQ and there is sq and "ever-changing" is a good description of just one of them and it isn't the latter. There is a 50-50 chance of getting that right but you blew it.
> 
> Marsha replied:
> Think about patterns.  They are not individual independent things.  They are value events.   Some patterns are repeated millions of times.  Each event is slight different dependent on an individual's unique history and the immediate dynamic experience.  When I state patterns are ever-changing that is what I mean.  The static event has a beginning, a middle and an end, and each static event is different.  They are ever-changing.    Depending of the circumstances, a pattern may be broad or tight.  It can be so much more or so much less than a dictionary definition, but SOM needs exact definition, intellect desires exact definition, and they are related.  This is why I understand the MoQ to be beyond intellectual patterns, and like QP beyond common sense and beyond language.  I believe RMP to have given us the MoQ in an intellectual form because it is all he had available, BUT he is pointing beyond what an intellectual pattern can express.
> 
> dmb says:
> 
> Look, that's exactly what I was complaining about. You're
> describing static quality in terms of "events" and as "ever-
> changing". But that's how Pirsig characterizes dynamic quality.

Dynamic Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable.  
That is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable!!!  


> There is static and dynamic and you need BOTH.

Of course!


> There is the value of order and stability and then there is
> freedom and growth. You're taking all the order and stability
> out of the MOQ

Certainly I am not taking all the order and stability out of the MoQ.  
Patterns are stable patterns, they are not ossified into objects.  They are patterns.  


> and since the MOQ is itself a set of static intellectual patterns,
> this destabilizes the meanings and definitions that make up the
> MOQ.

At the moment the MoQ is not a very stable pattern.  The pattern 
of belief that things independently exist in an external world is a 
very stable pattern.  The MoQ is a new intellectual pattern, and its 
growth and longevity is yet to be determined.  We hope!  


> That's not really relativism. It's more like intellectual vandalism. 

Look, maybe your Blarney is useful in everyday banter, but it is 
misplaced in philosophy.   It is distracting commentary, and not 
useful in explaining or trying to understand.  


> DQ is rightly characterized as an event, a process, as the ongoing
> flux of life. This is CONTRASTED with the static patterns of quality
> which are derived from this cutting edge of experience. Static intellectual
> truth are provisional. They evolve, sometimes quickly and sometimes
> over the course of centuries. But that doesn't mean they are ever-changing.

I don't mean they transform into something different, but they 
are patterns, p-a-t-t-e-r-n-s.  Gravity is a pattern of value.  If I 
asked a scientist to write down all he could on the subject of 
gravity and asked you to write down all you can on the subject
of gravity, they would be different, but they would both be bits
and pieces of the gravity pattern.  You might both write very 
different explanations but both of you might be correct.  A 
pattern is not limited to finite definition.  Patterns can be
amorphous and still be stable.  


> It just means they evolve and develop. "Provisional" truths
> exists presently and function as truths precisely because
> they are stable and ordered and they are open to revision
> at some later time if and when such a revision is warranted.

I agree.  Presently and in memory.  


> I mean, to say truth is provisional does not mean that it's
> fluid or in flux.

It is amorphous.  I bet there are aspects of gravity you do not know, or 
have forgotten and may be remembered at another gravity pattern 
event. 


> Static concepts need a certain level of stability or they can't
> function as concepts.

I agree.   


> That's why they're called STATIC patterns. They're ordered
> and stable and finite.

They are not finite!  Finite would be a thing-in-itself.  Patterns 
are repeated or memorized events or processes.  Habit.  


> This is not a problem and is actually quite necessary.

Ordered and stable is not a problem; finite IS a problem.  


> It's only a problem is these stable tools become rigid and
> inflexible and not open to revision. 

Then drop the word finite.
  

> Otherwise, intellectual static patterns are the most evolved,
> most open to dynamic change and the most moral level of all.

I agree.


> If you construe the MOQ in such a way that this highest level of
> static quality is undermined and destabilized, the cause of freedom
> and growth has also been undermined. 

No need to exaggerate ever-changing into an absolute absurdity.  Nor 
exaggerate relative truths into an absolute absurdity, either.  In the MoQ,
truths are relative.  At least that's how it was stated in Ant's treatise.  I am 
not talking about moral relativity, but epistemological relativity.


> 
> That's one reason why we need definitions and concepts and words to
> make sense and add up.

I agree, but I take these to be provisional and pragmatically useful.   


> This is the highest species of static good, not something to be undermined
> or demonized or conflated with the disease from which it suffers.

I have not sat through so many lectures on QP, for my health.  I agree with 
you that intellectual static patterns of value are the highest species of the good
as long it is understood that this remain provisional, patterns, not finite
objects and independent self.


> When Pirsig says that thinking takes you away from reality, he's saying that
> static patterns take you away from DQ.

No disagreement here.  But thinking takes you away from unpatterned 
experience, which is something worth experiencing first-hand. 
Thinking and talking about unpatterned experienced is not even close. 


> He's saying there is a difference between concepts and DQ, not that
> concepts are evil things to be gotten rid of.

I have never said concepts are evil.  I have never said intellectual 
patterns are evil.  Never!   I might say that to stop thoughts is mediation 
and a good thing, and meditation is a tried and true technique to move
 towards becoming awakened/enlightened.  And I might say that 
we think too much and take our thoughts too seriously.  And I might 
say that lessons learned by 'not this, not that' are infinitely better.  


> He's just saying that concepts are derived from something too rich and
> thick and overflowing and fluid to be captured.

I have no is some kind of personal description that I cannot relate to.


> Concepts are taken from experience the way a bucket of water can be
> taken from a continuously flowing river. It doesn't represent the river so
> much as it isolates some small finite portion. As the bucket's wall puts
> borders around a small part of the river, a concept puts borders around
> a small portion of experience. The river and the bucket are both full of
> water and so they are not ontologically distinct.  

Nothing new here...   Stated in every entry-level Buddhist text.   There's 
more to understand.   


> So it is with concepts. They are derived from quality and they are quality,
> the difference being that one is dynamic and the other is static. 
> 
> Static is good. Stale is bad. Dynamic is good. Degenerate is bad. It's about
> balance, see, and your reading puts these two out of balance. 
> 


Thank you very, very much Dave.   


Marsha
___