[MD] Static patterns are ever-changing?!? i

[david buchanan]

"...static quality refers to any concept abstracted from this flux." (McWatt)

"The constructed objects are the conceptualised aspect." (Paul Williams)

"In this basic FLUX OF EXPERIENCE, the distinctions of reflective thought,..  have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them." (Pirsig in Lila)

David Morey said to dmb:
...Now this is a very simple proposal, it is simply yes there is pre-conceptual SQ that we can experience contrasted to your all SQ is conceptual version (by the way is all SQ therefore impossible without language and culture in your view or are you using conceptual in some strange and over-extended way? Please answer this question if it is not too awkward for the weaknesses in your position). Now where you start saying my proposal is incoherent or makes no sense or is really a version of SOM, this to me looks like cowardice, defensiveness, evasion or fear, of course it may be stupidity, but I prefer to assume not. I have no problem understanding what you are saying and why, I even see the advantages, but the disadvantages are too great for me. 


dmb says:
Yes, as Pirsig puts it (quoting other philosophers), "we are suspend in language" so that "all of our descriptions of nature are culturally derived". This is how inorganic and organic static patterns are conceptual rather than the pre-existing objects of SOM. 

Isn't it true that your "pre-conceptual SQ" is just the pre-existing objects of SOM? This is why I've criticized it as a version of SOM. If that's not true, how is your pre-conceptual static quality different from the objects of SOM? Plus, since the MOQ describes DQ as pre-conceptual experience and describes sq as derived concepts, your phrase would mean "pre-conceptual concepts". To say that this phrase is contradictory or incoherent is not a personal attack on you. It is simply of point of logic and the proper use of terms. If you want to posit pre-existing objects, I'm sure there is a logically coherent way to say that. But if you want to say that, you really ought not call it the MOQ nor use Pirsig's terms simply because your usage defies his meanings.  
And, yes, I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings but I'm fairly certain that you're mistaken and that you do not understand the criticism of that mistake. But how can I be evading your proposal if I'm explaining why I think it's wrong? Critical engagement is pretty much the opposite of evasion, don't you think? 


David Morey said:
...I think an MOQ with pre-conceptual SQ rooted in experience can engage in this conversation and engage with a revised naturalism as proposed by Galen Strawson, but a non-realist and idealistic MOQ, as I see your version is very unlikely to be able to do this. 

dmb says:
Non-realist and idealistic? No, the MOQ is neither of those things. 

The idealism was already denied in one the quotes but it's a bit subtle. It's the one wherein Pirsig is quoting James. "In this basic FLUX OF EXPERIENCE [DQ]," Pirsig says, "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 called either physical or psychical: it logically precedes this distinction." (Pirsig in Lila)

In the MOQ, the immediate flux or pure experience IS reality and that reality is neither mind nor matter, "it cannot be called either physical or psychical". This means that reality is not made of any substance, mental or material. And so the MOQ is neither physicalist or idealist. 

The realist vs non-realist debate isn't addressed in Pirsig's work, as far I know, but my thesis supervisor wrote a book on the topic titled "Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism" in which he explains how the classical pragmatists (James and Dewey) had already made that whole debate irrelevant over a hundred years ago. The author was criticizing Rorty and the neopragmatists for getting caught up in such a non-issue. 


David Morey said:
.....If MOQ goes your way it goes so far from the mainstream I fear it is going to be lost and forgotten. Now that is my motivation, I look out at the wider world and propose non-conceptual SQ to save the MOQ from obscurity and marginalisation.


dmb says:
Well, I appreciate your motive but that was part of Pirsig's motive in claiming that "the MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of 20th century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good."


David Morey said:
Now if this proposal [for preconceptual SQ] is adopted what do we lose? I do not see that this approach diminished DQ and its centrality, but ignoring this proposal takes MOQ towards anti-realism and idealism and I think these are dead ends. The only advantage of "all SQ is conceptual" is that this allows you to defend your position as some sort of ultimate retreat from SOM, there is only DQ and ideas, but is this a sort of inverse physicalism? 

dmb says:
If your proposal were adopted, it would no longer be the MOQ. That's what you'd lose; the MOQ. You're just pushing realism and physicalism, the most common form of SOM, against anti-realism and idealism, which are less common forms of SOM. The MOQ is none of these things. These are false dilemmas. These are the contending schools of thought within SOM. But there are plenty of mainstream philosophers that reject all of these things, like James and Dewey for example. Nietzsche and Heidegger will get you there too but that 's a much harder road unless you speak German and/or you majored in philosophy. It would be an exaggeration to say these non-SOM alternatives are widely known but it's not unique to Pirsig and it's not the esoteric secret it used to be. And it's no accident that James and Heidegger both say a lot of very Buddhist things. These voices are all quite vital and mainstream - and they're all considered to be huge stars in the world of philosophy. 


David Morey:
Now if you have some good reasons for your view other than Ant says this or Pirsig says this, some actual intellectual reasons or values that you think your version delivers and mine does not then please let us hear them. If you want to say you are confused, or it is not logical, or this is just a return to SOM, or this is not coherent, save it as I have hear all that evasion a thousand times already.


dmb says:
Well, it seems you want to dismiss the evidence just some guy's opinion and reject the criticism as evasion. I don't see how that attitude can be justified and it makes discussion almost impossible. If your version of the MOQ converts it into physicalism and realism, then I don't see how it's anything other than a rejection of the MOQ - in favor of SOM. It's not enough to issue angry denials. You have to show me how it's different, explain how it's different.  


David Morey said:
My point is given this standard thought experiment how would you describe what happens when the girl first experiences colour for the first time, I think explaining this event in MOQ terms requires pre-conceptual SQ, how would you describe it without pre-conceptual SQ, I think that is impossible, but would be delighted to be proved wrong...

dmb says:
The answer is in evidence that you so rapidly dismissed as the inconclusive opinions of the author, the world's Ph.D. on the author's work and a Buddhist scholar quoted by that Doctor. (I think dismissing that kind of evidence is intellectually dishonest, to put it politely.) 
If I understand your question/objection, you are saying that the girl's first experience of color is impossible without "pre-conceptual SQ" and that means it's impossible unless some particular red thing is already there to be experienced by the girl. Again, I'll simply ask how this can be distinguished from SOM's model of experience. I honestly do not see any difference between your "proposal" and SOM.
In the MOQ, as in the hot stove example, the experience comes first and the explanations come later. Ideas about heated iron surfaces and tender human skin are secondary to the experience itself. And, importantly, there was a response to the experience even before those secondary explanations could be thought and articulated.

In the MOQ, "red" is a concept that has been derived from experience and that concept has persisted in the language because it agrees with experience. It fits and works unproblematically so that the connection between perception and conception is virtually seamless. As they say in philosophy, all perception is theory-laden or it's text all the way down. These are ways of saying that the world is not simply given to the senses, that we shape and mold the world according to our own conceptual categories. This was Kant's revolutionary move. Being a realist is hardly possible these days because it's considered to be philosophically naive. And it sure doesn't fit with the Buddhist features of the MOQ nor with its philosophical mysticism, whereas pragmatism and radical empiricism can accommodate Eastern philosophies.

In any case, pure experience or DQ is "an ever-changing flow of perceptions" and we construct these into objects with their various attributes, one of which might be "red" or any other ready-made name. The phenomenal reality or experience as such is the source of all the names and labels and thought categories. It all begins with experience. In the MOQ, that's where reality starts and all the so called "things" and their attributes are carved out of that primary empirical reality. That's where we get cut or burned, see red or blue, eat carrots or peas. We are talking about an expanded empiricism. There is nothing unrealistic about it. In that sense, it is a kind of realism. But it's not a metaphysics of substance. It's not physicalism or idealism. It's radical empiricism. Here's how Williams explains the experience of color and its relation to concepts. 

"In order to understand what is being said here, one should try and imagine all things, objects of experience and oneself, the one who is experiencing, as just a flow of perceptions. We do not know that there is something "out there". We have only experiences of colours, shapes, tactile data, and so on. We also don't know that we ourselves are anything than a further series of experiences. Taken together, there is only an EVER-CHANGING FLOW of perceptions (vijnaptimatra)... Due to our beginningless ignorance we construct these perceptions into enduring subjects and objects confronting each other. This is irrational, things are not really like that, and it leads to suffering and frustration. The constructed objects are the conceptualised aspect. The flow of perceptions which forms the basis for our mistaken constructions is the dependent aspect." (Paul Williams, "Mahayana Buddhism", Routledge, 1989, p.83/84).



DMB said to David Morey:
LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE! You might not understand it and even if you do understand it, you don't have to accept it. But we're talking about Pirsig's meaning, right? If we want to know what Pirsig says about static patterns, you have to honestly examine the evidence. And we can put this next to other kinds of evidence, namely the meaning of static concepts as it's understood by a Pirsig scholar, a Buddhist scholar and the pragmatist that Pirsig quotes on this same topic. If you sincerely want to discuss what has been asserted here, why would you say nothing about it?




David Morey replied:
I see it, I understand it, I accept it moves very close to what you are proposing, but it does not go all the way and is contradicted in places where there seems to be room for pre-conceptual SQ, and even if it did I am suggesting reasons why it is a miss step and a dead end, and...


dmb says:

Sorry, but I really don't think that counts as a careful and honest examination of the evidence. Not even close. Why doesn't it go all the way? What do you mean by "all the way"? Where are there contradictions? Where is there room for your proposal? Why is it a misstep? Your complaints are vague and point to nothing in particular. Your criticism is so lacking in specifics that there is literally nothing I can say in response.


David Morey continued:
...what I would like but do not get from you is why there are good reasons for banning pre-conceptual SQ from the MOQ, or what advantages there are to only having conceptual SQ.

dmb says:
Apparently, you want me to set aside all my criticism and just suppose that there is no question about the validity of your proposal. You think we can simply move on to the question of whether your proposal has greater advantages than the MOQ as I understand it. But that seems like a dishonest game to me because I actually believe what I saying about the MOQ and about your proposal. I've already supplied lots of good reasons for rejecting it, I think, but you keep pretending that they don't count as reasons.


David Morey said:
Sure all patterns imply some sort of comparative, but we regularly compare things in our experience that are right there unavoidably, a tree is full of branches, the branches resemble each other, such is SQ, the branches differ from each other, such is DQ, no  concepts required at the most basic level, only when we come to think deeper about this SQ and DQ or wish to talk about these experiences. I see no problem with such simple pre-conceptual SQ, with babies recognising faces before they can even speak. I have asked how babies recognise faces without conceptual SQ before, to date you have evaded this question that does not fit your position in my opinion, going to take up the challenge at last or evade it once again?


dmb says:
I'm starting to think that you don't know the meaning of the word "evasion". 

evade |iˈvād|  verb  Escape or avoid, esp. by cleverness or trickery.

The original post and this thread are about the nature of static patterns. You have rejected all the evidence and reasons without saying why and instead you are now demanding that I answer your questions about your proposal. Dude, that's just rude. I've already tried to explain several problems with your "pre-conceptual SQ" and otherwise been patient about it.

So what about the original evidence? Doesn't the original evidence answer your questions? I wasn't even thinking of it at the time, but it does repeatedly say that static patterns are conceptualizations. Your proposal rejects that but it seems that this rejection is based on nothing but your own personal desire for some realism. I like some realism and I think the MOQ gives us plenty but that's not evidence of anything. That's not a reason you can use to persuade me of anything. What about the evidence? What about the harmony and coherence of four or five different voices singing the same tune. I think you are the one doing the evading. 


"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." (Pirsig in Lila)

"Dynamic Quality is the term given by Pirsig to the CONTINUALLY CHANGING FLUX of immediate reality while static quality refers to any concept abstracted from this flux." (McWatt)