[MD] A realist MOQ

[David Morey]

Hi DMB and all

Just to clarify whilst I am questioning the non-realism that is currently
being
attributed to the MOQ, both whether Pirsig is committed to non-realism,
and if so whether it is a good idea for the MOQ to take this path,
nonetheless I remain in agreement with the MOQ's rejection
of subject-object dualism, and I still agree that experience is
primary and I see realism as an good idea that we can arrive at
via reasoning about the gaps and aporias in what we direcftly
experience, a reasoning that begins with the experienced reality
of SQ. I cannot see any reason why such reasoning about the
existence of SQ/patterns when we are not directly experiencing
them is being excluded from MOQ, MOQ embraces reason and
its deductive powers I believe. Sure experience remains primary,
it is where we get the ontology of DQ and SQ from, and experience
is shown by Pirsig to give no good reasons for adopting SOM and
many reasons why it leads to confusions and so should be rejected,
but nonetheless we move from direct experience to look at all
the SQ we experience and reason about it, with cosmology
and evolution being two of our greatest products of reason
combined with empirical evidence. This leads is to realism
I am suggesting, and it is perfectly possible to adopt a form
of realism that rests on the MOQ ontology of SQ and DQ,
DMB claims this is a reduced and less radical version of
the MOQ, his claim that this leaves us with no MOQ or
simply SOM is preposterous, as rejection S-O metaphysics
remains highly radical, rejecting realism too may look even
more radical, problem is, I suggest is that such a rejection
of realism is simply wrong, it does not align with our experience
and with how we all live, accepting basic realism every day,
and every time we step forward without checking the floor is
still there, a reliable and familiar pattern that we all know.
MOQ needs to be based in experience and are established
and sensible human practices if it is to find a connection with
ordinary human beings leading real lives. A non-realist MOQ
takes on all the problems of idealism, anthropocentrism and
solipsism, and opens the MOQ to all the attacks that have
already removed these views from current thinking. SOM,
unlike realism, has many well known flaws and needs fixing,
realism is not a problem and does not need fixing. Sure SOM
uses realism to try to justify itself, and if you reject realism
you undermine SOM, but the reason SOM can get itself
supported is because it is basing itself in something that is
right, realism is right, it makes good sense of our experience.
It would be surprising if something as successful as SOM was
not mixed in with ideas that are right, the real need is to
sort out the good from the bad, a more difficult intellectual
task I know, but an important one, one that will help stop the
MOQ go down a path full of new errors or dead ends. Undermining
the substances of SOM is a big and important task on its own,
if DMB thinks this on its own is not a radical task he is very
much undermining the full complexity of what MOQ does,
why is he so attached to just the non-realist element that aligns
MOQ so much and so worryingly with the worst problem of
post-modernism? The prison house of non-realism is not
an easy position to argue against, it is perhaps an easy
position to build defences up from within, it is a prison
though, and it has a bad future I suspect, no future that is.
Realism is the more open and fruitful prospect, aligns
better with science and evolution, as I think we can see
from DMB's evasions about evolution. A realist MOQ is a
consistent, easy to understand and valuable alternative
to a non-realist MOQ, opponents that claim otherwise
seem to have strange and mixed motives. I am sure there
is a case for the disadvantages of a realist MOQ, and a
case for the advantages of a non-realist MOQ, I lokk
forward to hearing these if they are ever offered rather
than bogus claims about inconsistency, logic failures,
and various other smoke screens. Does experience
look like it has gaps that need explaining by realism?
Yes I say, if the non-realists says no, what do they
really believe, do patterns cease to exist when they
move out of our direct experience, does the pattern
we call the Sun cease to be every night? Did dinosaurs
never exist for themselves, only the idea we have of them?
You can put together a pretty consistent non-realist position,
unlike my opponents I will not dent that, but does non-realism
not lead you to defend pointless contortions that realism avoids.
DMB seems to think the MOQ's SQ is now all trapped inside
the cuttings of an encyclopaedia, the cosmos in its non-human
independence seems to have ceased to exist for him altogether,
this is a terrible shame for an MOQ that once showed such
ambition. Does science see itself as just writing encyclopaedias?
A non-realist MOQ just cannot offer us a coherent philosophy of
science that any scientist is ever likely to embrace.

For the sake of a non-distorted MOQ I suggest you think again.

All the best
Davifd M

-----Original Message----- 
From: David Morey
Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2013 12:00 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] SOM & the MOQ's four levels


Hi all

What DMB says precisely reveals the disaster of rejecting not only SOM
dualism (a rejection which I support wholeheartedly) from the MOQ but also
going on to reject the most basic form of realism, the realism most human
culture adopts before SOM dualism even gets off the ground in human culture.
See comments.

'Arlo is quite rightly identified the essential problem with SOM, a
pre-existing reality (to which our true concepts must correspond). '

-no, SOM is the disaster of dividing experience into 2 substances, subject
and objects, if you stick to MOQ and develop some good ideas about the
patterns we experience, it becomes quite obvious that we do not experience
everything all of the time, patterns come and go in our experience, if you
are going to maintain your motorcycle pretty hard to avoid some realism
about it, now SOM realism is very different to MOQ realism, but there is
just no need to ruin the MOQs power by making it a non-realism philosophy.

'And yet, as Ron points out, the MOQ's four levels are supposed to represent
evolutionary stages of development wherein inorganic matter pre-exists the
human capacity for conceptualization by billions of years. This is the basic
problem, right? It seems to be a contradiction.'

- obviously you should not introduce matter into the MOQ, but yes MOQ does
not deny evolution and that organic patterns existed before human beings
came along to understand and experience them.

'Time and change are just basic concepts that emerge from Dynamic Quality,
not primary realities of their own and yet evolution is nothing but change
over time. '

- yes change over time, a time that preexisted us, non-dualistic
preexistence, it is a simple idea, I am sure you can get it if you stop
mis-associating it with its SOM version.

'So people wonder how to reconcile this or, much worse, they don't see any
need for reconciliation. In the latter case, there is no conflict because
Pirsig's levels of static patterns are just a new names for the same old
pre-existing "things" that SOM says they are.'

you really need to stick to MOQ and say preexisting patterns, we have no
good ideas about what causes experienced patterns or what causes happen when
we are not around, there are no objects in experience so SOM is nonsense,
but we do experience patterns, and these come and go, no reason to think
patterns cease to exist when we do not experience them, why are you leaping
to that assumption, your evidence? I think SQ and DQ are ontological and
exist independently of us and can explain non-human levels, why else talk of
levels?


"Being a MOQer, in this case, is just a superficial change in lingo and not
a real change of mind or perspective. In this latter case, where the
rejection of SOM is little more than a banishment of the terms "subject" and
"object", the Copernican revolution fizzled out, got short-circuited, or
otherwise failed to materialize. "

-dropping SIM dualism I'd not superficial, do you think MOQ is just
non-realism, dualism is the key problem with SOM, does Pirsig go on about
pre-existence like you do, I think not.

As I understand it, the MOQ's levels don't divide reality into evolutionary
stages so much as they divide what's in the encyclopedia. Pirsig says these
Arlo is quite rightly identified the essential problem with SOM, a
pre-existing reality (to which our true concepts must correspond). And yet,
as Ron points out, the MOQ's four levels are supposed to represent
evolutionary stages of development wherein inorganic matter pre-exists the
human capacity for conceptualization by billions of years. This is the basic
problem, right? It seems to be a contradiction.

Time and change are just basic concepts that emerge from Dynamic Quality,
not primary realities of their own and yet evolution is nothing but change
over time. So people wonder how to reconcile this or, much worse, they don't
see any need for reconciliation. In the latter case, there is no conflict
because Pirsig's levels of static patterns are just a new names for the same
old pre-existing "things" that SOM says they are. Being a MOQer, in this
case, is just a superficial change in lingo and not a real change of mind or
perspective. In this latter case, where the rejection of SOM is little more
than a banishment of the terms "subject" and "object", the Copernican
revolution fizzled out, got short-circuited, or otherwise failed to
materialize.

'As I understand it, the MOQ's levels don't divide reality into evolutionary
stages so much as they divide what's in the encyclopedia. Pirsig says these
levels include absolutely everything except DQ, which means it includes
absolutely everything except reality itself. That is quite a lot to leave
OUT of the encyclopedia, eh?'

yes your understanding is a disaster, it makes MOQ aligned with creationism,
how old does ZAMM say the world is? Introducing DQ and dropping SOM dualism
is very radical, dropping realism is a dumb step too far.

'It seems pretty clear to me that the MOQ's evolutionary levels are only
intended to organize our concepts and they should not be taken as a
description of reality as it is in itself. In the MOQ, that's is DQ and it
is not definable. You're not going to find the primary empirical reality in
the encyclopedia and the immediate flux of life is not to be found in the
dictionary, you know? '

here we go 'flux of life' quite right, there is life and it goes on in the
world beyond experience, you idealists should at leat be consistent and
referred only to the flux of experience, but you cannot help it you know
realism is right and endlessly refer to their existence and life of patterns
beyond our finite experience, and clearly we do not experience everything,
there is life beyond, there are possibilities beyond what we experience
directly, our imaginations allow us to fill in the gaps in a non-SOM way


'The evolutionary hierarchy of the MOQ does not divide the undivided
reality. It re-organized and re-cuts and re-imagines the ghosts, the
analogies, the knowable, definable, static patterns. '

you stick with ghosts if you want to! I will take the SQ I experience as
real, and when this SQ pops out of my experience I won't assume that means
it is some sort of ghost, that looks like a bad idea, real SQ does not need
me to exist, that is an odd idea of SOM idealism, I think realism is good,
in fact one of the reasons many people cannot drop materialism or SOM or
physicalism is that they worry that if they drop these things they lose
realism, a realist MOQ shows them they can drop these bad ideas without
losing the realism everyone really accepts, I mean do you check the ground
is still there every time you take a step forward! You need to start
agreeing your philosophy to your actions and experiences!