[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[Krimel]

[DM]
Do we not discover  regularities in experience before concepts?

Dan:
No. There is only a 'dim apprehension of we know not what.'

[Krimel]
We experience all sorts of regularities without any apprehension whatsoever.
The beating heart, the random of hiss of neurons firing in our auditory
systems, the direction Lincoln is facing on a penny, the name on the tag of
last our server, the number of pickets on the last fence we passed. In fact
the number of things we regularly experience without apprehension is vast
bordering on the infinite.

[DM]
Regularities like hot? Is not hotness a form of quality, a static quality we
understand long before -as a species- we get to language and concepts.

Dan:
There are different forms of understanding in the MOQ. Take a taste of
chocolate and then try and describe the taste. We understand biological
patterns like taste and smell but not in terms we can intellectualize. Is
that what you mean?

[Krimel]
Biological patterns are experienced irrationally. They are unnamed. 

Dan:
Well, again, as perceivers of Quality we wake to the breaking moment.
Everything else is an analogy. We build up a repertoire of cultural
knowledge as we grow older. Soon we come to believe that knowledge is the
world. But it is only what we think the world is. We see what we know is
true and ignore the rest.

[Krimel]
We are not at all confined to the breaking moment. We drift back and forth
in time as we recall the past and anticipate to future. Nor is memory simply
a matter of what we say about the past. Memory is analog and brings with it
the bodily experience of the past.

> [Krimel]
> Well yeah, that is an issue and one I have been trying to make so sense
of.
> We are creatures geared toward finding difference. We are possessed of 
> an array of sensory neurons for doing just that. But we also have 
> memory which lifts us out of the differences of each passing moment 
> and allows comparisons of the past with the present.

Dan:
If we look at the 'present' as (direct) experience then it becomes clear
that static quality in the MOQ is a memory of experience. It always lags
behind the present. In the moment there are no distinctions. I think that is
what the Buddha was on about when he spoke of there being no east and west
in the sky, how our thinking makes it so.

[Krimel]
If there were no distinctions in the present we certainly could not ride
motorcycles.  We are able to make discriminations perfectly well in the
present because we they are not rational. They do not require chopping the
world into bits they only demand an appropriate response.

[Krimel]
> This yields generalization and
> analogy where some properties of the present are regarded as similar 
> along some dimension to some previous experience. In language what you 
> get is a semantic network of interconnected pairing of signifiers and
experience.

Dan:
As long as it is remembered that experience as you use the term here is
after the breaking moment. That's where a great deal of confusion arises:
using the differing meanings of experience as pointing to the same.

[Krimel]
Assessments of facticity are made instantly without conscious or rational
intervention in our coping as Heidegger might say..

-------------------------------------

Dan:
I don't think this is right. Distinctions arise after the pre-intellectual
moment. How could they not? By allowing concepts to infiltrate the
pre-intellectual we destroy any semblance of the MOQ.
I've done a quick search of Lila and I find no mention of 'pre-intellectual
thought.' There is a reason for that. If it is pre-intellectual, how can
there be thought?

[Krimel]
The pre-intellectual IS the irrational. But it does involve being, doing,
acting. Irrational does not mean wrong or crazy it simply mean not rational.
It is this boundary between the rational and the irrational that causes so
many problems here. I have offer the rational/irrational binary are a way of
clarifying the problem.

Dan:
Perhaps. But they take place after the present moment. Anything, be it
rational, irrational, digital, analog, are all static quality patterns
emerging from experience. At least if we are talking the MOQ, which I assume
we are.

[Krimel]
To speak of this things renders them static but the irrational, the analog,
and the heuristic do not require speech. They are modes of being that do not
carve the world into pieces. The problem with the rational, digital, and the
algorithmic is that they do.

[Dan]
Thank you for your insights.

[Krimel]
I appreciate your thoughtful comments.