[MD] kill all intellectual patterns

[X Acto]

dmb said:
That's the meaning of "truth" in the MOQ. "Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality." ...and for pragmatists like Pirsig there are many truths, all of which are provisional and invented - as opposed to eternal and discovered.  

Ron replied:

Well, if we are to take Dynamic Quality as eternal and discovered, that which persists through time and extends beyond the individual experience then we are indeed speaking about a singular truth, that which the monism of MoQ is predicated upon...

dmb says:
You've directly contradicted the textual evidence, Ron. Sigh. It's so damn discouraging. Do I really need to explain HOW you're defying the evidence? In the MOQ, truth is a static pattern and DQ is the source and substance of all static patterns. Truths are subordinate to DQ and DQ is the  larger "entity" from which all static patterns are derived. DQ is not true or false because those designations are intellectual and static whereas DQ is prior to and more basic than anything we could say or think about it.
Let's be clear about what Pirsig is and is not saying, shall we? Again, here is the textual evidence. 

"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions." 

"Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality."

You see how DQ cannot be considered any kind of truth, singular or otherwise?

Put another way, direct immediate experience is not true or false. It simply is. 
That is the distinction between DQ and sq. DQ is the primary empirical reality (direct experience) and intellectual abstractions (idea, concepts, definitions) are static quality. Primary means first, prior to, and concepts are secondary, are derived from the primary. Pirsig quotes James on this point: "There must always be a discrepancy between concepts [sq] and reality [DQ], because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing." 
That's the meaning of "truth" in the MOQ. "Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality."

Ron replies:
I gothcha Dave, I dont deny the textual evidence, but I just ask we take a closer look at what is actually being
asserted. Now, we are saying DQ is primary and continuous, as you say, it IS and as much as we have 
corresponded I was hoping you would take my meaning of the term "truth" in a more empirical manner
because if we follow that which IS as the continuous flux of experience, the primary empirical reality that 
static truth concepts are tested against and put to work in, then we are meaning DQ to be the ultimate test
of our concepts and ideas, DQ then is MoQ's truth. Those static concepts that consistently pass muster
in the flow of immediate experience are often thought to be most consistent with the dynamic flux, those that
continuously prove their value. To clarify we are saying the true is what IS only we assert that perception
of what IS is limited incomplete and in flux. I'm not insisting on anything just comparing how RMP
explains DQ and how Socrates and Aristotle explain the good and the concept of truths relationship
to it and they all share similar ideas.
 
dmb said previously:
There is nothing logically contradictory about having an experience while thinking at the same time. The idea here is to get them both working TOGETHER. And doing that means putting them in their proper relation, knowing which is which.


Ron replied:
Right, as A.N. Whitehead asserted, :"We must construe our knowledge of the appearent world as being an individual experience of something which is more than personal. Nature is thus a totality including individual experiences, so that we must reject the distinction between nature as it really is and our experiences of it which are purely psychological. Our experiences of the appearent world are nature itself."

Now there is a lot to chew on here and it has a quite a bit to say on the matter of truth as a sort of singularity, the ancients exhaulted truth as that which was the closest to the good, in other words truth is not just one of many static patterns it is the best and if it is perennial then there is something about it that persists through change, meaning that some truths are better or truer than others, some truths are more than personal they extend past the individual experience.

dmb says:
[Snip]
Also, our pragmatists are quite deliberately rejecting ancient ideas about Truth. Pragmatism is an alternative to the long standing idea that the truth is whatever corresponds with the way things really are, the way reality really is, apart from and beyond our experience. For the Platonists, the Forms were the real reality and for Modern SOMers, the real reality is objective, physical reality. Pragmatism rejects this correspondence theory of truth, rejects all fixed and eternal truths and instead insists that experience IS reality. Truths can only ever be the ideas that work successfully within experience and should never be used to make claims about any reality outside of experience. These are just metaphysical fictions, the pragmatists say, and philosophers have no business talking about them. This is radical empiricism wherein the world just is the world of pure experience itself.

  Ron:
The ancients ideas about the true as correspondence with the way things ARE included the caveot
that just what IS is in flux and unknowable, and that those ideas which were the most consistantly 
successfull were the closest we could get to any kind of knowledge of the good. Because of this
they deduced that these concepts were closely related . This was enough
for them to assert those ideas as possessing a trueness and a foothold for clarity and precision to be
predicated on. Now I am fully aware of the reactionary response to rationalists conceptions of "Truth"
and thats not where my arguement is going nor is generated from.
 
For any idea to hold meaning it must have practicle consequences in experience.
 
..
 
 
.