[MD] Static Patterns Rock!

[david buchanan]

David Morey said to dmb:
...So you believe babies and animals presumably use concepts,  that all patterns are inseparable from concepts, 


dmb says:
No, I think patterns and concepts are one and the same. And I believe babies and animals can respond to experience without concepts.  


David Morey said to dmb:
I believe we experience percepts and these are patterned, if the MOQ has no place for these then it has a gap,  or seeing percepts as patterned is wrong, you need to explain why percepts do not exhibit patterned behaviour 


dmb says:
I think there is no such thing as a "patterned percept" and the "gap" that concerns you is merely a product of your own confusion. Basically, you are projecting the products of reflection back onto pre-reflective experience. You want to conceptualize preconceptual experience. 


DMB quoted Pirsig: 
"Quality is shapeless, formless, indescribable. To see shapes and forms is to intellectualize. Quality is independent of any such shapes and forms. The names, the shapes and forms we give Quality depend only partly on the Quality. They also depend partly on the a priori images we have accumulated in our memory. We constantly seek to find, in the Quality event, analogues to our previous experiences. If we didn't we'd be unable to act. We build up our language in terms of these analogues."


David Morey said to dmb:
...Now more interpretatative analysis of this text, Pirsig seems to waver, he does not say all shape and pattern comes from intellect,  he does not say quality provides nothing to SQ,  he says it depends 'only partly' on the quality,  so something is there before SQ,  what is it,  percepts I suggest,  the first rung of experienced pattern the seed for full blown SQ. For any sort of worthwhile realism we need percepts as pre-conceptual,  otherwise it is interpretation all the way down to DQ,  how does that differ from Rorty or the worst aspects of post-modernism?

dmb says:
No, Pirsig does not waver. He says "every last bit of it" several times, he never backs off, and it would create all kinds of consistency problem if he did waver on this. But more to the point, yes, it is interpretation all the way down but unlike postmodernism or Rortyism these interpretations are derived from DQ. That's what's "there" before static patterns. And EVEN more to the point, this evidence directly contradicts your assertions about patterns in the flow of perceptions. "Quality is independent of any such shapes and forms". You can talk about shapes and forms and patterns all you like, but that's exactly what DQ is not. You wrongly believe that the shapes and forms you perceive are simply given to your senses and then conceputalized but the shapes and forms are concepts that shape your perceptions. You think realism means having to put those shapes and forms in the outer world, already there waiting to be percievers. No, we created all of that. We all learn these shapes and forms as we acquire the language, etc. 

But here's one of your bigger stumbling blocks...


David Morey said to dmb:

We share experiences,  there are patterns to see in experience,  one person can point them out to another,  there can be more than one,  take a gestalt image,  the two patterns can be seen,  but there is not an infinite number of gestalt images/patterns in the picture, that would be more like an ink blot where any image can be projected ion a real flux,  DQ is not an ink blot flux,  it is more like an ink blot flux with gestalt images coming and going....


dmb says:

Okay, you're looking for "patterns" in the experiential flux because you IMAGINE this flux to be chaotic and meaningless like an "ink blot" or "white noise". Nobody says that. We even have Pirsig on record explicitly denying that DQ is like "chaos". Quite the contrary. Empirical reality is the ultimate bullshit detector. That's where our intellectual descriptions live or die. We can't just make stuff up or be whimsical. I mean, rejecting subject-object metaphysics doesn't mean rocks suddenly have no weight or that knives can't cut me. Rejecting the metaphysics of substance doesn't mean I stop obeying traffic signs. The primary empirical reality is not some other world, it is the basis of everything we think about reality. I do mean WE. All the shapes and forms of the world, including yourself, is part the mythos. 

David Morey said to dmb:
Now if this is a bad idea I'd love to hear why,  but I am not listening to any repeats about SQ is all patterned/conceptual,  DQ is all unpatterned/pre-conceptual,  anyone can see that is entirely missing the point, ...



dmb says:

You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. The so-called "gap" is just a result of a series of misconceptions. The MOQ's evolutionary hierarchy is quite seamless in this respect; everything is capable of responding to DQ to various degrees, even subatomic particles. 

And, sadly, your weird version of DQ as "white noise" or an "ink blot" could have been avoided if you have understood that "unpatterned" simply means "unconceptualized" and NOT "chaotic" or whatever. 

And you just don't personally like the "interpretation all the way down" to DQ thing. Sorry, but that's what the guys says and that's MOQ is. This part is difficult to accept, I guess. Sounds like madness, but he left it in, didn't he?