[MD] DQ/sq as WATER/ice

[Ant McWatt]

Ant McWatt comments to David Morey:


David,

I was just looking through your recent conversation with Dave Buchanan about the MOQ's Dynamic-static terminology and how it can lead to the error of physicalism (by thinking the term "static" in the MOQ has something to do with Newtonian mechanics which, of course, it doesn't).

In the Pirsig-McWatt Letters 1993-98 PDF, you will see that Pirsig suggests (in a 1997 letter)  that "patterned" and "unpatterned" were terms he could have used instead of "static" and "Dynamic". 

What I tend to do therefore to avoid making the error of physicalism when thinking of static patterns is to replace the word "static" with the word "patterned".  So, for example, we can see that melting water is a pattern that often indicates the arrival of Spring (yet another pattern!). 

Likewise, it's sometimes helpful to replace the term "Dynamic Quality" with the the term "Unpatterned Quality".

Best wishes,

Ant


David M said to DMB:

> ... Now seems to me you want to say look at experience right and you have to acknowledge the DQ. Great I agree with that but I want to look at all the levels of SQ and how they have evolved, changed, become and be-gone. To me the play of SQ reflects DQ, so that all SQ is subject to change, overcoming, renewing and original emergence. To me the plurality and openness of the cosmos as a whole reflects the plurality and openness that we find in experience. There is a cosmos as a whole that transcends our individual experience, sometimes you sound like experience is limited to a single self, whereas it clearly opens out onto a world and a plurality of others. This is how the MOQ of experience relates to the wider whole of the cosmos in process.
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> dmb says:
> Experience is limited to the single self? No, Dave, that's just solipsism. Solipsism is a position that's predicated on the subjective self, which the MOQ rejects. I'm not arguing against openness or plurality either. The problem that I've been criticizing is still unaddressed, David. Is there some reason you will not address the actual point, which I've repeated several times now? The same criticism still stands, this time I'd press it against this particular assertion: "There is a cosmos as a whole that transcends our individual experience."
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> Like I said, it a mistake to impose physicalism upon "static patterns," as if that were just another name for  the pre-existing and external objects. You're using the MOQ's jargon (static and dynamic) but still conceptualizing everything in terms of SOM. Static patterns are conceptual, not material. ...The MOQ does not reject "subjects" and "objects" so long as they are taken as concepts and not mistaken for primary realities. ... I still think it's a mistake to be talking about "physical states that transcend our experience". The MOQ says that "physical states" are concepts derived from experience. They do not transcend experience but grow out of it and refer back to it.
> ...As I see it, I'd said last time, you are persisting in an error that I already tried to correct two or three times [now it has been three or four times] . Instead of addressing the criticism, in fact, you have basically repeated the same error yet again. I had complained that it, "only undermines the MOQ's central distinction" The problem I'm complaining about is a "materialistic misinterpretation of the static/Dynamic split, wherein metaphysical terms are inappropriately used to describe physical states."  Pirsig says that Dynamic Quality is the cutting of experience but you're using "dynamic" to describe knowable, definable, physical processes. Do you see what I'm complaining about here? It's not something you've addressed, as far as I can tell. Instead, the error is simply being repeated in various ways.
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> It's really not cool that I have to repeat myself over and over again. If you can't address this criticism, please don't bother replying at all because that would just be a silly waste of time. 
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