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

[David Morey]

Hi DMB

"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)

dmb said: Yes, as Pirsig puts it (quoting other philosophers), "we are
suspend in language" so that "all of our descriptions of nature are
culturally derived".

DM: Sure, concepts and language go together, they describe nature or rather
experience, but what are they describing about experience, what comes before
conception,
are there pre-conceptual patterns in experience, part of our experience, a
quality of experience? Conceptions add something to our experience but this
implies that our
experience has the potential to have conceptions applied to it, this is what
I mean by patterned experience, sure it can be cut in many ways, we can
identify what we
experience as a arm, or we can focus on the hand part of our experience or
we can identify fingers but there is something there to be identified, that
has pattern,
sameness or regularity, something in experience not out in the
things-in-themselves of SOM taken as a starting point as a metaphysics.

dmb said: 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?

DM: Sure we identify patterns differently, we call some inorganic and some
organic, this is conceptual and intellectual,
but what we are identifying in experience has a pre-conceptual patterned
quality I would suggest, this is what we find in
our experience and identify as open to being conceptualised. Pre-conceptual
patterns exist in experience, this avoids SOM,
because we cannot leap to the SOM idea that these patterns represent objects
that are causing our experiences, clearly
we cannot get out of experience, it is the only reality we know, it is
primary and it is all we have to analyse and understand,
this is why in MOQ we build our metaphysics from experience, and on the
ideas of SQ and DQ. Now once we have an MOQ
metaphysics based on experience we can start to build a well founded
conceptual understanding of SQ and patterns. Here for
me is where realism comes in, we build an understanding of SQ, this includes
ideas about patterns and how they must exist
prior to human experience and prior to human conceptions and when human
beings are not around to experience them,
patterns come and go, they continue to exist and undertake processes
separate from human beings, realism is the only
sensible way to make sense of our experience, based on an SQ/DQ metaphysics
of our experience, where metaphysics
means finding the most basic conceptions of what we find going on in our
experience: change and patterns, whereas SOM
is a bad metaphysics in that for all its value for human culture and
understanding leads to many problems and confusions
that MOQ avoids. In MOQ we can recognise that patterns have a pre-existing
life beyond human experience but this is a
conclusion based on reasoning about our experience not a metaphysical
assumption as it is in SOM. So in MOQ we have
nothing to say about substance, we do not know what lies behind patterns or
change, we just accept that there are
patterns and these is change, because these things are the most basic
qualities of experience. We are interested in
physics and what it can tell us about patterns and cause and layers of
pattern etc, but we adopt a flat ontology where
patterns have many levels, we do not reduce high level patterns to low level
patterns, psychic and cultural and historic
patterns are as real as any inorganic or organic patterns, so physicalism
and reductionism seem to be senseless assumptions
or projects, although if science or the study of SQ can show us interesting
things about how patterns relate that is all well and
good.

dmb said: 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?

DM: OK, I have no real objection to making the cut this way, we could say
what we mean by SQ is the conceptual understanding and description of all
pattern, but in that case why call it quality?
Why not just call it conceptual analysis and description of patterns? But
you seem to be only recognising patterns when they have been conceived,
where does this leave patterns before language and conceptions, do animals
and babies not recognise patterns or identify sameness? If pre-conceptual,
pre-language patterns are not SQ where do we place them? Now we have science
and an understanding of the body we know about all sorts of pattern
recognition and pre-human culture processes that are patterned. There is an
alternative here, one I am happy to explore, but not one I have heard anyone
clearly express. Here it is: if pre-conceptual, pre-language patterns,
patterns that we experience are not seen as SQ, because we see all SQ as on
the conceptual, culltural, language level, then pre-conceptual patterns are
an aspect of DQ, this means DQ is full of pattern or potential pattern, it
is abundant with pattern, where the focus has been on DQ as flux, this
should be seen as a flux of pattern, a sensual overload, endless shape,
smell, colour, feelings, sounds, full of pattern, full of potential
sameness, pre-conceptual, pre-language, not yet defined, not yet brought
under the light of conceptual, but highly differentiated, DQ as a bubbling
flux, bubbling with pre-conceptual pattern. Is that how you see DQ, if so I
am happy to split DQ (flux/pre-conceptual pattern) and SQ (all our
conceptions about pattern) this way. My only objections has been about where
pre-conceptual qualities had gone, no objection to seeing them as DQ, but DQ
is less undefined and more pre-defined. DO you agree or do you have some
objection to this alternative for pre-conceptual pattern, I have always seen
all pattern as belonging to SQ, but this alternative can work for me if we
clearly recognise pre-conceptual pattern as belonging to DQ, otherwise we
need something in between DQ and SQ as you see them, which we can call
post-DQ post-flux patterns or pre-conceptual SQ.

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 said:
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.

DM: No my point is that the MOQ cannot describe the girl's experience
without seeing what happens before she can conceptualise the colour red, the
colour experience of red is a pre-conceptual pattern, how do you describe
this without saying pre-conceptual patterned experience, happy to call this
a dynamic patterned quality experience prior to conception if we are happy
to see the patterned quality of DQ, pre-conceptual patterns of DQ, that is a
good enough alternative to pre-conceptual SQ for me.

DMB said: 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.

DM:Well yes, we have a patterned experience that we call red, calling it red
adds a conception to the patterned experience, but my point is we need
pre-conceptual patterned experiences
that the concepts are then in agreement with (this is a realism about
experience, pre-conceptual patterns are real and we can identify them, they
are what we base all our sciences on, a true empiricism,
not warped by SOM). You say the concept agrees with experience, well yes,
but it cannot agree to a flux, so what do we say? We can say it agrees with
the dynamic patterns of our experience, placing
patterns in DQ rather than in SQ.



DMB: the connection between perception and conception is virtually seamless

DM: So all perception is conceptual and is therefore SQ?

Yet you add: In any case, pure experience or DQ is "an ever-changing flow of
perceptions"

DM: So here perceptions are DQ but you also think DQ has nothing to do with
conception as that is what SQ is, are you getting confused here?


DMB: ...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.


DM: Well maybe we agree, DQ is full of red, blue, foods, shapes, etc, well
that's what I mean by pre-conceptual patterns, if this is where you suggest
we put pre-conceptual patterns then I think that works OK for me.



"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).