[MD] Mountains of evidence

[David Morey]

Hi DMB

You are quite right I am not interested in your textual evidence, I happily concede that the authors you quote can be drawn on to support your favoured interpretation of how to define DQ and SQ,   if you read my arguments I am not questioning your textual analysis,  but rather whether these definitions agree with what we find in experience, I am happy that undifferentiated experiences are DQ,  that cultural patterns are SQ,  but I wanted to know how these definitions covered pre-cultural patterns and I argued that pre-cultural patterns were surely also pre-conceptual. Until now no one has clearly stated that pre-cultural patterns, or percepts,  or biological patterns were conceptual but Horse has now said this. Names are not important to me so I can accept this,  bit of an odd use of conceptual but never mind, but at least this is clear percepts are a form of SQ,  patterned,  conceptual but pre-language and pre-culture, then there is higher level SQ involving language,  culture and articulated concepts as such,  higher SQ is clearly more open and adaptable to change through cultural innovation,  a percept like the taste of a banana is not changed by anything cultural,  by in the MOQ its stability is seen as somehow conceptual, our capacity to recognise banana taste had some sort of reflexive aspect that the MOQ wants to call conceptual,  OK fine,  but there is a clear difference between the SQ of tasting a banana and talking about one or suggesting in language that a yogurt say also has a banana flavour.

Now I think what Horse says makes sense,  but DMB is still claiming DQ is full of content,  yet this content is patternless, so if it is full of content what is that content, anything you name must have an identify or form,  is not all content SQ? Or is all this content no-thing? Where does the taste of a banana belong,  we can obviously differentiate it from the taste of other fruits,  we can name it, so is it not entirely SQ? (Do you realise like a lawyer trying to get the facts straight I ask a lot of leading questions,  to try and pull out the logic and implications of other people's assertions,  you seem to confuse my questions with my views and see inconsistency as a result,  but you need to distinguish my probings from my views,  all quite clear if you read me more carefully,  I used to do this for a living you know). Now are you trying to say all qualia is DQ,  is this your content? But do you think that as soon as any qualia is identified or differentiated it becomes SQ? Is content not better applied to SQ where you can identify some difference? Or do you want to see DQ as a sort of cloud,  undifferentiated,  but full of potential SQ that you can somehow pop out of it? Is that your view? 

"language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided"

So would an apple and banana taste the same if we gave them the same name,  only language differentiates the two tastes?

"Our structured reality is preselected on the basis of value, and really to understand structured reality requires an understanding of the value source from which it’s derived."

So if value is "preselected" and a "source" of reality it is not interpretation all the way down is it.


"Reality isn’t static anymore. It’s not a set of ideas you have to either fight or resign yourself to. It’s made up, in part, of ideas that are expected to grow as you grow, and as we all grow, century after century."

Is it interpretation all the way down? Pirsig says it is only "in part" made up of ideas, what is the rest then, ideas maybe,  but ideas that are more static or given? Pre-cultural or biological SQ I assume.

"This is where value fits. Value is not at the tail-end of a series of superficial scientific deductions that puts it somewhere in a mysterious undetermined location in the cortex of the brain. Value is at the very front of the empirical procession."

Yes value comes first,  science then looks at the regularity of what we experience to create science,  but the regularity has to be there for science to build on,  it is empirical in its approach,  examining evidence for regularities, the language we use does not create the regularities it only articulates them,  so there are pre-language and pre-cultural forms of SQ experience.

"without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation"

So here is a percept, but nothing intellectual going-on, yet it is SQ because there is difference,  difference between a low and a high quality situation.

"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."

A stimulus,  a given,  not interpretation all the way down then is it?

"What we notice is the stark and unqualified “givenness” of these qualities. They present themselves and they confront us...… independence"

Yes as I have been saying,  percepts or qualities are givens,  and he says qualities not quality,  so we already have a many and difference here,  qualities even have independence,  great quote,  exactly what we need to do science and adopt realism.

"By static Pirsig doesn't refer to something that lacks movement in the Newtonian sense of the word but is referring to any repeated arrangement...  i.e. any pattern that appears long enough to be noticed within the flux of immediate experience." (McWatt)

Note how patterns "appear",  that they are "noticed",  they do not need language or concepts to abstract them then?

I could go on, do you see why I might query how well constructed the current definitions of DQ and SQ are currently? Shame you don't want to engage and help try to fix this muddle. 


david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Marshan to Andre: 
>The static world is not an illusion, the static world is like an illusion.
>
>
>Andre to Marshan:
>Do you believe that the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory?
>
>
>
>dmb says:
>
>In what sense is the static world "like an illusion"? How can Marsha's description of static quality ("like an illusion") be reconciled with Pirsig's descriptions ("real as rocks and trees," "a rational, metaphysical basis" and "essential to the evolution of life" and "for real")? 
>
>This is what happens when the MOQ is replaced with hacked up version of "Buddhism for Dummies"? 
>
>"What the Metaphysics of Quality concludes ...that when a society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good. These moral bads and goods are not just 'customs.' They are as real as rocks and trees." 
>
>"In a subject-object understanding of the world these terms have no meaning. There is no such thing as 'human rights'. There is no such thing as moral reasonableness. There are subjects and objects and nothing else. This soup of sentiments about logically nonexistent entities can be straightened out by the Metaphysics of Quality. It says that what is meant by 'human rights' is usually the moral code of intellect vs. society, the moral right of intellect to be free of social control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel; trial by jury; habeas corpus; government by consent—these 'human rights' are all intellect vs. society issues. According to the Metaphysics of Quality these 'human rights' have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical basis. They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a lower level of life. They are for real." 		 	   		  
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