[MD] reifying carrots

[MarshaV]

On May 9, 2012, at 12:01 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> Marsha said:
> I agree subjects and objects, whether understood as things-in-themselves or patterns of value, are secondary.  (And, as you know, my understanding of patterned value is as nothing that could be called independent or autonomous.)
> 
> dmb says:
> The mistake I've been complaining about is contained in those two sentences. Those sentence show me that you still do not understand the problem, which is treating the cure as if it were the disease. 
> When subjects and objects are understood as things-in-themselves or as independently existing primary realities, that is the disease. That is how subjects and objects are taken when they have been reified.

Marsha:
Yes, I agree that there is a problem with considering self and objects as independent, autonomous entities.  


> dmb:
> When subjects and objects are understood as intellectual static patterns of quality, then they are taken as secondary and conceptual. That is the cure. That is how subjects and objects are taken when they have NOT been reified.

Marsha:
Yes, I agree that when self and objects are understood as static (patterned) value it is an improvement over autonomous self and objects.


> dmb:
> What's primary in the MOQ is immediate experience, is empirical reality and all concepts are secondary.

Yes, I agree Dynamic Quality is primary, but I would put it that ALL static (patterned) value is secondary.  


> dmb:
> The MOQ is one big anti-reification program and yet you keep insisting that reification is inherent to all conceptualization. This is not some trivial little mistake. Blunders don't get any more obvious or epic than this one and yet you just don't see it. 

Marsha:
Yes, I agree that the MoQ makes a correction to the understanding that self and objects are autonomous.  There are recurrent patterns instead.   But I do not believe that just making the statement corrects the natural tendency, and I see no reason not to investigate where the misconception is initiated to help undermine the old som perspective.


> Marsha said:
> Seems to me, though, that you are suggesting that "rationality" is something other than an intellectual static pattern of value contained within the MoQ's fourth level?  What would that be?  I have asked you about the static (patterned) value in the fourth level and your response is about one particular pattern.  ..I understand all these quotes as static patterns (explanations: being suspended in language) coming from a man who is pointing to a reality that is beyond them; a reality based on direct experience.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> Huh? Intellectual static patterns of quality are just ideas and concepts.

Marsha:
Yes, but are all static (patterned) value just concepts and Ideas?

> dmb:
> Concepts and ideas are just intellectual patterns of Quality.

Marsha:
Do intellectual patterns of value evolve before biological patterns of value?   

I think it best to consider static (patterned) value from two different points of view.  One would be the nature of all patterns:  conditionally co-dependent, impermanent, ever-changing and conceptualized.  A second would be by categorization by evolutionary function - inorganic, biological, social and intellectual – into their four-level, hierarchical structure. 


> dmb:
> The intellectual LEVEL includes the capacity to think and all the products of thought.

Marsha:
I think all static (patterns) are interdependent with the processes of consciousness.  

"Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can be described as a process of defining Dynamic Quality.  But once the definitions emerge, they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts it."
    (Annotation  Lila's Child)

Please notice RMP states "static patterns", not 'intellectual static patterns'.    This is why I think approaching static (patterned) value from two points-of-view is helpful.  Also please note this quote: 

"‘Static quality’ refers to anything that can be conceptualised and is a synonym for the conditioned in Buddhist philosophy. 49"

Footnote 49 - "The ‘conditioned’ is everything dependent (or caused) by something else."  (MoQ Texbook)

Please notice again that this statement is not confined to addressing only _intellectual_ static patterns.  


> dmb:
> Pirsig's efforts to "expand rationality" is a matter of identifying the problem (SOM) and offering a solution (MOQ). The main difference between the problem with rationality and the solution that improves the intellect is that the former reifies subjects and object while the latter does not. 

Marsha:
You seem to be saying that 'rationality' is something _other than_ a static pattern of value within the Intellectual Level.  How are you defining 'rationality'?  

I believe the MoQ offers a better, expanded understanding of Reality.  



> dmb:
> I accuse you of being anti-intellectual because YOUR conception of the intellect says that all conceptualization reifies, says all concepts are inherently fallacious and inescapably stuck with SOM.

"An example of sammuti-sacca [conventional (relative) truth, or static quality] is the concept of self. Pirsig follows the Buddha’s teachings about the ‘self’ which doesn’t recognise that it has any real existence and that only ‘nothingness’ (i.e. Dynamic Quality) is thought to be real. According to Rahula, the Buddha taught that a clinging to the self as real is the primary cause of dukkha (which is usually translated as ‘suffering’).  Having said this, Rahula (1959, p.55) makes it very clear that it’s not incorrect to ‘use such expressions in our daily life as ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘being’, ‘individual’, etc’ as long as it is remembered that the self (like anything else conceptualised) is just a useful convention."
     (McWatt, MoQ Textbook)

Marsha:
Here it states that static quality, using the concept of self as an example, is just useful convention.  

You've been accusing me of being anti-intellectual long before I reintroduced reification.  You accused me of being anti-intellectual because I think the poem in Chapter 32 to of LILA is saying something very important:  

"While sustaining biological and social patterns
Kill all intellectual patterns.
Kill them completely
And then follow Dynamic Quality
And morality will be served.

"… When Phaedrus first went to India he'd wondered why, if this passage of enlightenment into pure Dynamic Quality was such a universal reality, did it only occur in certain parts of the world and not others? At the time he'd thought this was proof that the whole thing was just Oriental religious baloney, the equivalent of a magic land called 'heaven' that Westerners go to if they are good and get a ticket from the priests. Now he saw that enlightenment is distributed in all parts of the world just as the color yellow is distributed in all parts of the world, but some cultures accept it and others screen out recognition of it.
   (LILA, Chapter 32) 
 

> dmb:
> I'm saying that you're wrong about that claim and I've tried to explain why it's wrong, why it doesn't add up.

Marsha:
Your explanation doesn't work for me.  I hope I've shown you why.  Intellectual patterns were the last to evolve.  Yet RMP has said that static (patterned) quality , like the Buddhist's conventional reality, represents everything that can be conceptualized.   The intellectual level didn't evolve first.  

How could "thinking" evolved around the ancient Greeks, and not before?  Was there no thinking before that?  Did they not abstract patterns and name them many centuries before Homer?  Something in your point-of-view doesn't add up.  That is why, again, I think it best to consider static (patterned) value from two different points of view.  One would be the nature of all patterns:  conditionally co-dependent, impermanent, ever-changing and conceptualized.  A second would be categorization by evolutionary function - inorganic, biological, social and intellectual – into their four-level, hierarchical structure. 


> dmb:
> By treating the cure as if it were the disease, you've killed the patient.

Marsha:
Silly talk that says nothing.


> dmb:
> You've denigrated and distorted the MOQ's highest static good and undermined the whole project.

Marsha:
Not if you consider static quality from the two different perspectives.


> dmb:
> It would be a lot more upsetting if it made any sense, if it were a real threat to the project. It's far too weak to cause concern on that level but it's sad and frustrating to watch you hang on to nonsense with such tenacity for soooo long and in the face of a mountain of textual evidence.

I don't see the mountains of evidence.  Many of the quotes you presented were from ZAMM which means they are pre-MoQ, pre-DQ/sq split, and pre-patterns of value.


Marsha



> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Previously, dmb put this mountain of evidence on Marsha table: 
>>> 
>>> And I keep showing you the textual evidence that James and Pirsig both did what you claim is impossible, which is to see subjects and objects as concepts rather than the ontological starting points of reality. Like I just said, if your claims were true, it would not be possible to recognize or articulate the concept of reification itself. If your claim were true, Pirsig (and James) would be doing something impossible when they recognized subjects and objects as concepts rather than as primary ontological categories. That is what they're doing right here:
>>> 
>>> "By this (radical empiricism) he (James) meant that subjects and objects are NOT the starting points of REALITY. Subject and objects are SECONDARY. They are CONCEPTS derived from something more fundamental which he 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 wich we make them. Pure Experience cannot be called either physical or psychical; it logically precedes this distinction." (Lila, 364-5)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think that one piece of textual evidence is enough to defeat your claims, but if that's not enough there is plenty more where that came from. Pirsig's central purpose is to expand rationality and improve the intellect and the textual evidence should make it very clear what that means, especially to those who've read and thought about Pirsig's work. And please remember Pirsig's first reply to the intellect question; Anyone that's capable of reading a philosophical novel already knows what intellect is, what thinking is, he said. I always took that as a polite way of saying, "what a stupid question!".
>>> 
>>> Anyway, here is what we SHOULD be talking about; the expansion of rationality as Pirsig sees it.
>>> 
>>> "...So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution." [ZMM] 
>>> 
>>> "[Phaedrus] did nothing for Quality or the Tao.  What benefited was reason. He showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational." [ZMM] 
>>> 
>>> "I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." [ZMM] 
>>> 
>>> "I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.  It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." [ZMM] 
>>> 
>>> "In a sense, the MOQ is an acceptance of this fact, that quality is here, and that if we can't explain it, you're not going to get rid of the quality. We have to adjust our system of explanation in such a way that we can incorporate quality into a rational system of thought." [Pirsig, AHP Lecture, 1993] 
>>> 
>>> "Quality is not going to go away and if our system of thought cannot comprehend what quality is and lay it out in a rational, orderly form then we must modify our whole system of thought to accommodate this existence of quality or value in our lives.  The MOQ is that attempt to completely up-end and change the entire theory of the universe from a subject-object theory of the universe, which has existed in the past, to a value-centered universe in which suddenly you have a system of thought in which "quality" is a real, usable, rational term and in which no destruction is made to subjects and objects as they are conceived in our present metaphysics." [Pirsig, AHP Lecture, 1993] 
>>> 
>>> "Because of his different metaphysical orientation [i.e., not SOM] Phaedrus saw instantly that those seemingly trivial, unimportant, "spur of the moment" decisions that Mayr was talking about, the decisions which directed the progress of evolution are, in fact, Dynamic Quality itself." [LILA] 
>>> 
>>> "The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns." [LILA] 
>>> 
>>> "But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one - is another matter altogether.  Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method.  Dynamic value is an integral part of science.  It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." [LILA] 
>>> 
>>> "It seemed that when you add a concept of "Dynamic Quality" to a rational understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an understanding of contrarians." [LILA]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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