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

[david buchanan]

Horse said to David Morey:

>From the [James quotes] and what I know of James, he appears to be referring to the equivalent of DQ and SQ. Perhaps there's an element of memory involved as well but I can't see why you think that Percept is any different from DQ!


In what follows I shall freely use synonyms for these two terms.  "ideas," "thought," and "intellection" are synonymous with "concept," Instead of "percept" I shall often speak of "sensation," "feeling," "intuition,"and sometimes of "sensible experience" or of the "immediate flow" of conscious life. Since Hegel's time, what is simply perceived has been called the "immediate,"while the "mediated" is synonymous with what is conceived." -- William James, Some Problems in Philosophy (1911)


"The great difference between percepts and concepts is that percepts are continuous and concepts are discrete. Not discrete in their being, for conception as an act is part of the flux of feeling, but discrete from each other in their several meanings. Each concept means just what it singly means, and nothing else; and if the conceiver does not know whether he means this or means that, it shows that his concept is imperfectly formed. The perceptual flux as such, on the contrary, means nothing, and is but what it immediately is. No matter how small a tract of it be taken, it is always a much-at-once, and contains innumerable aspects and characters which conception can pick out, isolate, and thereafter always intend. It shows duration, intensity, complexity or simplicity, interestingness, excitingness, pleasantness or their opposites. Data from all our senses enter into it, merged in a general extensiveness of which each occupies a big or little share. Yet all these parts leave its unity unbroken. Its boundaries are no more distinct than are those of the field of vision." -- William James, Percept and Concept and Their Practical uses



dmb says:

That's right, Horse. Thanks for the help.

Funny thing is that Pirsig quotes James in Lila on this very point and it's a quote that I've posted a zillion times already. For BOTH Pirsig and James, reality itself is Dynamic experience while concepts are static. And this pure experience is a continuous flow of perceptions. 

" 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality."

What really kills me is that "percept" is just the singular form of "perception", just as "concept" is the singular form of "conception" or "conceptualization". James and Pirsig are not just making up words as they go along. They're just pressing the ordinary, dictionary definitions into philosophical service. Any philosopher who defies their own native language is just a very bad philosopher. 

McWatt explains it this way....


Immediate experience is experience where there is no distinction between what is experienced and the act of experiencing itself. Only after the experience do concepts such as perceiver and perceived arise. It is illogical to put them otherwise.
Experience (or Quality as Pirsig terms it) is an awareness of the changing flux of reality before any conceptual distinctions such as subjects and objects are made. Pirsig equates "Quality" with F.S.C. Northrop's "aesthetic continuum" which Northrop defines as "what is IMMEDIATELY perceived in an all embracing (emotion producing) field" (see Northrop's 1948 "Logic of the Sciences & Humanities").
Northrop explains this field further:
"The field is as immediately given as any specific quality, whether secondary or tertiary, within it. Moreover, most of the directly experienced field is vague and indefinite. Only at what William James termed its center is there specificity and definiteness. Thus it is evident that the indefinite, indeterminate, aesthetic continuum is as immediately apprehended as are the specific differentiations within it."
(F.S.C. Northrop, "Logic of the Sciences & Humanities", Macmillan, 1948, p.97)
"Immediate, undivided, experience" is perceived as an event by Pirsig. He phrases it thus:
"Quality is not a thing. It is an event. It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object... The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality!"
(Robert Pirsig, paper on "Subjects, Objects, Data and Values", 1995, p.12)
i.e. it is from experience that concepts such as subjects and objects arise; such concepts do not create experience or perceptions. It is worth emphasising here that subjects and objects are solely intellectual concepts derived from reality as a whole. The problem with the terms "subjects" and "objects" is that they have been ingrained into us from an early age so, without question, we accept their literal existence. They don't. Subjects and objects are just concepts and no concept exists outside the mind.


Paul Williams also explains that dynamic reality itself is "just a flow of perceptions," that "there is only an ever-changing flow of perceptions".

"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).


It's very discouraging to watch as people like David Morey and Marsha ask questions and raise objections AFTER being presented with direct answers to their questions and objections. They repeatedly ask for answers and evidence that has already been given dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of times. As a result, this discussion group goes round and round and round the same questions and, sadly, these are the most basic concepts in the MOQ. Every day is like the first day of school and we never get past the ABCs. Thanks to this persistent confusion, we're still struggling to establish the meaning of Pirsig's most basic terms. These guys still cannot discern the difference between the problem (SOM) and the solution to that problem (MOQ). 


It breaks my heart every day. It's like they are deliberately trying to sabotage and undermine the MOQ. If as if they were deliberately trying to make sure no intelligent person will take Pirsig seriously. If one wanted to make Pirsig look really bad, like his readers are totally clueless, all you'd have to do is quote anything Marsha of David says in this forum. As I keep saying, it's embarrassing.