[MD] Definitions.

[MarshaV]

dmb,

Along with some similarities between the MoQ and W. James' Pragmatism, RMP has pointed to similarities between the MoQ and Buddhism, and RMP is considered a Process philosopher, along with Charles Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead.  Look up the word 'process'.  

 
Marsha 








On Feb 20, 2013, at 9:36 AM, david buchanan wrote:

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> Here is Marsha's (incorrect and incoherent) definition/explanation of static patterns of value:
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> Static patterns of value are repetitive processes, conditionally co-dependent, impermanent and ever-changing, that pragmatically tend to persist and change within a stable, predictable pattern.  Within the MoQ, these patterns are morally categorized into a four-level, evolutionary, hierarchical structure:  inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. Static quality exists in stable patterns relative to other patterns:  patterns depend upon ( exist relative to) innumerable causes and conditions (patterns), depend upon (exist relative to) parts and the collection of parts (patterns), depend upon (exist relative to) conceptual designation (patterns). Patterns have no independent, inherent existence.  Further, these patterns pragmatically exist relative to an individual's static pattern of life history.
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> Here is dmb's much simpler (and non-contradictory) definition of static patterns:
> Static patterns of value are deductions derived from experience.
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> dmb continues with textual evidence that supports and explains this simple definition:
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> We can see this definition at work in Pirsig's answers, like Annotation 57 of Lila's Child for example, where time and space are both referred to as being "dependent" on experience and "deduced" from experience. 
> "In the MOQ time is dependent on experience independently of matter. Matter is a deduction from experience."
> In chapter 29 of Lila, Pirsig says the same thing about "subjects" and "objects". They are not the starting points of reality, not the conditions that make experience possible but rather they are static patterns. Pirsig and James and all the other radical empiricists agree that they are concepts derived from experience.
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> We also see this in the same annotation (57), where Pirsig elaborates on the idea that time and space are both static concepts that depend on experience because they're derived or deduced from experience (DQ). - Dan asked a follow-up question; "Could you elaborate on what you mean by “independently of matter”? 
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> RMP replied:
> I think the trouble is with the word, “experience.”  ..It is more commonly used as a subject-object relationship. ...In a subject-object metaphysics, this experience is between a preexisting object and subject, but in the MOQ, there is no pre-existing subject or object. Experience and Dynamic Quality become synonymous. Change is probably the first concept emerging from this Dynamic experience. Time is a primitive intellectual index of this change. Substance was postulated by Aristotle as that which does not change. Scientific “matter” is derived from the concept of substance. Subjects and objects are intellectual terms referring to matter and nonmatter. So in the MOQ experience comes first, everything else comes later. This is pure empiricism, as opposed to scientific empiricism, which, with its pre-existing subjects and objects, is not really so pure."
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> Please notice that in the MOQ "experience and DQ become synonymous" and "everything else comes later".  Please notice that "time" and "change" are among the static concepts that come later. "Subjects and objects are intellectual terms," he says, which is only consistent with his original claims in Lila.
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> "The second of James' two main systems of philosophy, which he said was independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism. By this he meant that subjects and objects were not the starting point of experience. Subjects 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 which we make them. Pure experience cannot be either physical or psychical: It logically precedes this distinction." (Pirsig 1991)
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> Soi what is my point?
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> Marsha's definition is not only incorrect, it's a meaningless, verbose, and incoherent jumble of nonsense that confuses and conflates the MOQ most basic distinction, the distinction between concepts and reality. By confusing the static and the Dynamic, apparently, she has come to the conclusion that concepts and their definitions are undefinable. Marsha has also undermined the intersubjective cultural context in which these concepts exist so that definitions are "relative" to the individual's life history and not a shared inheritance. The inability to share any intelligible meaning with other human beings must be awfully lonely. 
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> This is nihilism, relativism, solipsism - and it contains the same contradictory nonsense I've been complaining about all along. (She says "static patterns are ...ever-changing" here too.)
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