[MD] Independent reality?

[david buchanan]

"Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it."  --ZAMM, Ch. 20


Craig said:
According to this quote, "our environment" precedes "the continuing stimulus" which in turn precedes "our creation of  the world in which we live".    on "our environment" for its "stimulus".  But what makes an environment ours depends on us.  We & "our environment" are inter-dependent.



dmb says:
There is no reason to assume that this "environment" is the pre-existing objective reality of SOM. (It's worth noting that he's offering this explanation to people who understand things in terms of behaviorism, Pirsig says, and so he's putting in terms they can understand.) If we continuing reading this passage, in fact, Pirsig goes on to say that this idea sounds like madness. It sounds insane. It defies common sense and the basic assumptions of science. 

And that is very much the point. Pirsig knows that this is a complete revolution in thought. 

And that also why so many people fail at this exact point. But look, he's saying that reality as we understand it, every last bit of it, is a man-made pile analogies. Reality as we know it, earth, sky, science, philosophy, every last bit of it, is a set of humanly constructed concepts. Yes, those inherited and evolved concepts tell us that matter (the material environment of science and common sense) comes first and ideas come much later. The MOQ agrees that this is a good idea for common sense purposes and for scientific purposes but not philosophically and metaphysically. On that level, the MOQ rejects SOM and begins with different starting point. 

"But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.  ...I remember this fragment more vividly than any of the others, possibly because it is the most important of all. When he wrote it he felt momentary fright and was about to strike out the words "All of it. Every last bit of  it." Madness there. I think he saw it. But he couldn't see any logical reason to strike these words out and it was too late now for faintheartedness. He ignored his warning and let the words stand." 

To claim that these analogies (static patterns) exist before we conceptualize them is to totally miss the point. He's saying that we created the world in which we live. Every last bit it. That is pretty much the opposite of a pre-existing objective reality. The stimulus (Quality) is not separate from us and the world we created is hardly independent of us. It's totally dependent on us. We carved out the whole thing on the basis of experience, in response to what we know most directly, the immediate flux of life.