Hi Bodvar !
Here we go again... (isn't that a song ?)
>Denis and Group
>You said:
>> My ongoing discussion with Bodvar has raised some doubt in my mind
>> about whether or not Pirsig has really managed to rid himself of the
>> S/O divide, after all.
>
>Did I cause your doubts or.....?
Bo, do you answer my posts as you read them, or do you read them and THEN
answer ? I advise you to do the latter, it would have saved you the work of
attacking the mock argument and allowed you to contradict my REAL position
with more than a few "you didn't understand" statements.
>
>> As everyone here remembers, Quality can be divided according to the
>> MOQ into Dynamic Quality and Static Quality, the Unexpected and the
>> Expected. SQ is further divided into the four levels of patterns of
>> value, namely Inorganic, Biological, Social and Intellectual levels.
>> Outside of this, nothing remains except Quality itself. I'll have to
>> check, but strangely I believe that RMP says "Quality" and not
>> "Dynamic Quality".
>
>As said I "recant" about the QUALITY that can be divided into
>DQ/SQ. I don't have LILA with me, right here, but this extra meta-
>quality causes a whole can of worms to open and I doubt if Pirsig
>says so at all ...or means it that way at least.
I've missed that post, obviously. Could you point me to it so I can read
about your arguments for rejecting the idea of a Quality existing prior to
the division between DQ and SQ ?
>> Of course, Pirsig also points out before starting the MOQ that it's
>> made of words about Quality and not of Quality itself, but decides to
>> go on anyway. He also makes it clear that the MOQ is a map, one that
>> describes the territory better than SOM will ever be able to, but
>> still only a map.
>
>This too. What is not words? Or in our minds?
Quality.
Let's say it again : QUALITY !!!
QQQ U U AAA L III TTTTT Y Y
Q Q U U A A L I T Y Y
Q Q U U AAAAA L I T Y
Q Q U U A A L I T Y
QQQQ UUU A A LLLL III T Y
Q
...for Christ's sake !
Your insistence on this particular topic is self-defeating, I believe,
because at any time the notion of Intellect (and NOT mind, which is too
vague) covers everything you say. And while you try to deny Pirsig
acknowledgement of it, the fact is that he DOES acknowledge it. Only by
leaving Quality out of the Intellectual game has Pirsig managed to save it
from language. Nothing else has been saved, Bodvar, whether you like it or
not.
>These somish
>impossibilities are as a matter of fact THE STARTING POINT of the
>MoQ. Now that we have Struan among us I should beware of
>saying so, but P of ZAMM went the subjective path of the SOM all
>the way and ended up in the solipsistic no-man's-land from where
>he spotted the quality solution ....then to start anew about "all
>words" or "all language" or "all in our minds" is to have missed the
>MoQ idea completely.
To miss the intellectual nature of the Metaphysics of Quality (and thus, the
*relative* truth of it) is to fall into the old trap of defined absolutes
again. One Book, One Truth ! Please, spare us.
>But as you say you are going to pursue the
>objections to the bitter end so I take the following paragraph as the
>devil pledging his case.
It was exactly that, so I'll snip my fake position and your opposition to it
(since I oppose it myself, though not, it would seem, for the same reasons).
[snip]
>> First of all, Quality is not "objective/primary", because it is also
>> "subjective/conceptual". By this I mean that contrary to what
>> Idealists used to think about the objective and subjective worlds,
>> Quality ALSO englobes SQ. In the MOQ, the *real* world is as much
>> about words and feeling as about electrons and DNA strands. Quality
>> and Static Quality are not different "things". SQ is an *aspect* of
>> Quality, but it is still Quality. To use an analogy, to say that
>> Static Quality is irrevocably divorced from Quality is as absurd as to
>> say that the color of my scarf is irrevocably divorced from my
>> scarf... it just doesn't make sense.
>
>Er...is this "MoQ for Dummies" ....or :-) ? The subjective side to the
>SOM is NOT the DQ of MoQ! According to Pirsig the subject is
>Social and Intellectual
This "objective/primary" and "subjective/conceptual" only referred to my
fake position. In it, I tried to equate Quality's primacy with SOM's
"Absolute Truth", and the MOQ conceptual nature (or its intellectual one, if
you prefer) with SOM's "subjective statements". I presented this position
because I (falsely, it seems) believed that it was what you thought was
wrong in my interpretation of the MOQ : everything in the Intellectual level
and nothing outside. I wanted to make a point that this WASN'T what I was
saying. But you still accuse me of... God knows what, since you NEVER come
out with it ! And I'm gettin pretty tired of trying to
*guess*.
>....an interpretation that IMO is useful at
>most instances, but meets with problems at other, so I have
>proposed "Die Endlösung" with my SOLAQI.
I which, my dear Bo, you are in complete agreement with Wilber (and knowing
your knee-jerk reaction to the guy, that should cause you to back out of it
real quick ! ;)
But again, I would have liked a little more meat to chew on. We do NOT infer
everything you mean from the meager scraps you deign to write down, Bo.
>
>> ALL-ENCOMPASSING QUALITY
>
>> Quality is every atom and all the energy in the Universe, but also
>> every words ever spoken, every book ever written, every dream that has
>> ever moved the minds of humanity, every vision that has ever inspired
>> an artist, every thought in the minds of philosophers the world over,
>> every love ever felt, every hate and lust and hunger and pain...
>> Quality is all that, and more.
>
>This is OK. Static value is value too, but make no mistake of it:
>The MoQ is also a duality and dynamism is diametrically opposite
>to statics so it not that way that it reconciles the mind/matter
>impossibility of SOM.
Sorry, but I cannot agree with you. SQ bridges the gap between Intellectual
and Biological with the Social level, and therefore the MOQ DQ/SQ division
heal the mind/matter gap by AVOIDING IT ALTOGETHER. Once it is no longer the
primary division, it makes no sense to still talk about it. The evolutive
link covers everything that needs to be covered.
>
>> Therefore, to say that words about Reality are not Reality is in fact
>> imprecise, and one would have to add that they *are* a part of
>> Reality, but not the whole stuff.
>
>You seem hung up in the words/language notion. No sooner have
>you and I reached some agreement before you are at it again.
And ?... Why I am "hung up" ? What do you mean ? How does it lessen the
quality of my arguments ? This is *supposed* to be an exchange, Bo, and
you're not offering much.
>
>> There I guess, people will come out screaming "So you see, our minds
>> ARE separated !"
>
>...as well as the "mind" notion. ) or is it rhetoric ...?
It was rhetoric.
[snip]
>Was there any SOM before the MoQ? Not in my opinion, judged
>from myself it was the way reality was constructed from the outset,
>and half my relief was that P (of ZAMM) had gone outside the SOM
>mythos - which can be likened to Medieval man being brought out
>in space to see the earth as a globe in a QUALITY cosmos.
>
>What the SOM "says" we can now dissect, before it was the
>FACT.
Bo, you seem to play with words to avoid saying that the MOQ has
reconstructed reality (Quality ?). Why not just say it ? It has, after all.
A change has been brought into the Static Intellectual level, and it has
opened up new vistas for us to see Dynamic Quality through. If you want to
say it is a new level, fine, go ahead. I agree that it is a higher moral
ground (it is BETTER) that the one SOM thinking trapped us in. While I
prefer to call it "intellectual" because I cannot spot any new
"machine-code", I don't mind if you want to say it is better and higher than
intellect-as-SOM. It is. But you seem to believe that putting it in the
intellectual level would somehow make it "equal" with SOM. It doesn't, of
course, there are moral grades inside levels as well as between them, or why
would Pirsig advise us to eat plants rather than animals ? MOQ can be higher
than SOM while staying at the intellectual level. This save us the trouble
of creating a fifth level consisting of basically the same stuff (concepts)
as the one below.
[snip]
>> HOW DOES THE MOQ DEFEATS SOM ?
>> To be honest, it's not the MOQ but ZAMM that dispatches Truth to the
>> limbo of dead "truths". But the MOQ, founded on the double insight of
>> the fundamental monism of the Universe (as Quality), and of the
>> falseness of Truth, puts the slab over the coffin, by providing an
>> *alternative*.
>
>I feel a certain uneasiness about jettisoning "truth" ...the many
>truths greeting of Doug Renselle gave me the shivers. We can't
>leave the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity (truth) and
>this is were my SOLAQI saves the MoQ . This IS the Intellectual
>level! At that level we may keep truth, mind, thinking ....etc ad
>infinitum and their opposites.
Had you read me more carefully you might have noticed this passage :
"The MOQ, though, provides us with a new fiction, more inclusive, that still
preserves the victories of SOM against Society, but with a much better
esthetic. By placing the levels in a moral hierarchy, we can prevent the
beauty of the intellectual level being sullied by the goodness of the social
strictures, or by biological "feel-good" emotivism."
And in any case, do you really believe that we cannot do Science without the
notion of an Absolute Truth ? Bo, we've been doing it ever since Popper
pioneered the field of epistemology, there's nothing NEW here...
Pirsig has provided a frame to understand the problems that have been
bugging philosophy since the middle of the nineteenth century, but he has
not *discovered* them. He has put a name on what scientists were only dimly
aware of : the test of validity for a scientific theory is its
*intellectual* quality, without interferrence from social or biological
patterns. We do NOT need S/O division, at any level. In fact, you seem to be
on the side of Wilber again, here, since he also keeps the S/O division
until the last "non-dual" stage.
>> You see, in SOM(s), there is no way out. Forever and ever, you'll
>> *know* that there is a *real* world and you'll know that everything
>> would be all right if only you knew how to reach it. But if you
>> philosophologise long enough, you'll also understand that it cannot be
>> done. Truth is your goal, your God and your only Ideal, but to reach
>> it is like trying to reach the horizon. But you're supposed to take it
>> all with stoïcism and run anyway, blindlessly ahead until you drop,
>> vanquished. That futile, sterile and miserable quest is then supposed
>> to be the "highest calling" of our race, our pride and eternal burden.
>
>RIGHT! Why didn't you start by this and save all the rest of your
>great dialogue. A major work, I acknowledge the effort an assure
>you that I have read it thoroughly, but I see no important points in
>it. Particularly that about Wilber makes me doubt your
>understanding ...regrettement.
I find this below you. Is reading another author than Pirsig a
crime-according-to-Bodvar, nowadays ? You disappoint me. You oppose two
authors as if they had nothing in common, while I find nothing but
similarities and complementarity. Stop being so dogmatic.
>
>Our difference - THE difference - is the QUALITY - Quality-DQ/SQ
>question, but thanks for writing such a major work.
Well, on my part I am absolutely not satisfied by your answer. You've just
never stated WHY you object to my arguments, and simply dismissed them as
"lack of understanding" or having "missed it completely". I'm not going to
let you go so easily, old pal ! EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN ! Where am I wrong ?
Your kind of stance just gives credence to Struan's claim that any criticism
pointed at a MOQist is only answered by an accusation of "SOMism", which
soon comes to cover almost anything we find embarrassing.
The tone of this post might be abrupt, but I'm getting tired of having to
guess what you mean since you never try to make any reasoned argument.
EXPLAIN YOURSELF !
1. Why isn't the MOQ an intellectual pattern ?
2. How does SOLAQI miraculously avoid the fact that you're *talking* about
Quality ?
3. What's that difference you're talking about just above ?
I'm crying out for some fully fleshed-out ANSWERS, and not just cryptic
statements about how SOLAQI "avoids" all pit-traps. Do not TELL us. SHOW us
!
I know this post verges on the side of verbal aggression, Bo, but I feel
like I have exhausted by bag of tricks to make you ANSWER me. Get out with
it !
Denis
PS : BTW, I'm still waiting for your answer to the rest of my "Some
metaphysical premises (Episode II)" post.
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