[MD] Pragmatism and Philosophical Mysticism

[skutvik at online.no]

Davids of all denominations.

23 March. 

David T :
> > My question about mystical experiences centers around this quote from
> > near the end of Lila .[Lila-pg 186] "Strictly speaking, the creation of
> > any metaphysics is an immoral act since it's a lower form of evolution,
> > intellect, trying to devour a higher mystic one." ... If we accept that
> > "natural" mysticism is accessible to all humans with sufficient practice
> > or the right kind of drugs and reconfigure, somehow we're not really
> > sure how,  the chemical/neurological operations of the brain; How is it
> > Pirsig can claim that it is "higher" than the intellect? Could it not be
> > just as likely to be lower?

There would not be any Quality without the MOQ. (ref. the Newton 
Gravity parable in ZAMM)  but this is the "mystic" Pirsig. 

David MB :
> The quote is another way to express the DQ/sq distinction. Metaphysics
> is a set of static intellectual patterns while DQ is the mystical
> reality. 

This is Aristotle where "metaphysics" means a theory ABOUT reality, 
not LILA's opening assertion: "No one living in an ordered universe 
can avoid metaphysics" meaning that under Aristotle's lurks the SOM. 
The DQ/SQ now ought to lurk under everything, but instead Pirsig 
retains Aristotle in a Q-disguise, namely the Quality/MOQ that 
overrides the MOQ.      

> In the quote, he's putting this distinction to work in the moral
> hierarchy of the MOQ. At the end of chapter 29 he invokes this same
> principle but applies it to science, saying that it is immoral for
> philosophers of science to try to suppress DQ in that area. 

If the MOQ is an(other) intellectual pattern, does not everything 
become intellect, the levels are after all a property of the  MOQ ....no?. 
If there are static levels independent of the MOQ (in the same sense 
that the alleged QUALITY) do we not have a "mystic" MOQ outside of 
the "static" MOQ?     

> When it comes to radical empiricism or even just the train analogy
> from ZAMM, DQ isn't higher so much as it is first. The primary
> empirical reality, he calls it, or the leading edge of experience.
> "Primary" means first and most basic but it also implies importance.
> So maybe being first and being highest aren't so different.

Yes, DQ are all these adjectives, and what the MOQ speaks about,  
why then this ghostly super-DQ  that the MOQ is desecration of?    

> But I think words like bigger, broader, wider, richer, deeper all get
> at it. James talks about DQ or pure experience with terms like
> "thickness' and 'overflowing'. These terms are all relative to normal
> consciousness and rational thought. Again, this is just another way to
> talk about the DQ/sq distinction. Since sq is derived from DQ, it is
> always something less, some small portion of the total flux that was
> taken up and conceptualized. Trying to put DQ into sq is like trying
> to carry the ocean on a boat.

I agree that SQ is less than the complete DQ/SQ "constellation" and 
why the levels all dissolves into their parent level if pursued far and 
deep enough. But speak of putting DQ into SQ, isn't trying to fit the 
MOQ inside its own intellectual subset a blatant violation of this tenet? 

Bodvar