[MD] Indeterminate?

[david buchanan]

Howdy MOQers:

In the "perceptions" thread, Marsha said:
DQ is "indivisible, undefinable & unknowable"; the term 'indivisible' pointing to monism, non-dualistic: indeterminate.   [and later said:]   Directly perceiving Dynamic Quality, seems to me, makes all "things" and even patterns false: illusions and phantoms (ghosts).  That does not translate into meaningless. Patterns exist as value.



dmb says:
Let's take a look at the concept of "indeterminacy" in relation to philosophy in general and in relation to the MOQ in particular. I think that Marsha doesn't really understand this concept and that she has been misapplying it to the MOQ - with vacuous relativism and nihilism being the tragic results of this misapplication.

Generally, the term "indeterminate" just means "uncertain" or "unspecified" but in philosophy it's used to describe certain epistemological positions (certain views on the nature of knowledge and truth). The most obvious thing to say about these "indeterminate" positions is that they oppose the positions which claim that truth and knowledge can be specifically determined. What are those positions, exactly, and who ever made such claims? 

The prime example would be SOM, with its correspondence theory of truth. On this view, there is an objective reality that determines what's true and is the reality about which we can have knowledge. "If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality," Pirsig says, "then we're permitted only one construction of things - that which corresponds to the 'objective' world." Plato's Forms, those fixed and eternal Ideas, are very different from the objective realities of science but they still serve to determine truth and knowledge in a very exclusive way. In both cases, there is only one way to be right, only a single-exclusive truth that is determined by the ultimate reality beyond appearances. Kant's Noumenal realm, the reality of things-in-themsleves, is similar to Platonism and Objectivity in this sense. The thing-in-itself is the real object of knowledge and determines what's true. These are examples of the position that Pirsig rejects.

By contrast, the MOQ “does not insist on a single exclusive truth," Pirsig says, and "one doesn't seek the absolute 'Truth'. One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along." On this view, truth and knowledge are not determinate, they are indeterminate. Truth and knowledge do not exist in relation to a realm beyond our experiences, they do not correspond to a fixed and eternal reality. Instead, truth and knowledge are human constructions derived from experience and they are expected to grow and evolve just as we do.

Basically, Marsha uses the concept of "indeterminacy" against the MOQ's version of truth and knowledge, thereby giving a double dose of indeterminacy to an already indeterminate position. She uses Pirsig's critique of Plato and SOM against Pirsig himself. This is just the most recent example of often repeated misapplication of the concept: "Directly perceiving Dynamic Quality," Marsha said, "makes all 'things' and even patterns false: illusions and phantoms (ghosts)."

Somehow she thinks this error can be explain away by simply contradicting herself: Even though she concludes that even static patterns are false, illusions, phantoms and ghosts, she also insists that this conclusion "does not translate into meaningless," she says, because, "patterns exist as value." Pirsig's "ghost" story is not intended to undermine his own conception of intellectual static patterns, of course. His aim is to undermine the "law of gravity" insofar as it is conceived as an eternal feature of the one only objective reality. When it is taken like that, then there is only one exclusive truth about gravity and Newton was the guy who discovered what was always there. Instead, Pirsig says the law was not discovered but invented. It is a very powerful, useful and otherwise valuable concept, i.e. it works as a concept. So long as it is understood to be a humanly constructed tool rather than an eternal reality, it is not false or illusory. Pirsig's ghosts, analogies and static patterns are ways of understanding physical laws prevent the false illusions. Pirsig's patterns prevent the reification of concepts like gravity. Plato was the super-reifier wherein goodness was not just a concept that refers to any number of good experiences but was a fixed and eternal reality unto itself. Truth, Beauty, Justice and just about any noble-sounding abstraction was treated as an actual thing somewhere beyond time and space - like the law a gravity.

To use Pirsig's critique (of determinate positions like Platonism, objectivity or any kind of essentialism) against Pirsig's MOQ is like trying to melt water because you've mistaken it for ice. The ice-melting task has already been preformed and yet Marsha foolishly tries to liquidate the liquid and so the whole thing is overheated by about 100%. She wants to loosen the already loosened, thereby leaving everything so slippery that there's no grip or traction anywhere. Instead of a hierarchy of value, we get a picture of ever-changing soup wherein intellectual quality and nonsense are indistinguishable.  

Notice how much work it is just to untangle her use a single term? This same sort of exercise could be conducted on every term she uses. Can you imagine how long it would take to deal with the rest of the mistakes? I guess it would take at least 100 hours to clean up the mess. Even if I actually took the time, she'd just start spilling the same mess all over again the next day. 


Sigh.