Hi Roger, Rich and Group:
Looks like we’ve run smack into a wall of logical absurdity
PIRSIG:
Duality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that
there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of
these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and
knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is
essentially a kind of dialectical definition and since Quality is
essentially outside definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of
Quality" is a logical absurdity. (LILA, Chap.5)
ROGER:
I am trying to conceptually explain the preconceptual and screwing
everything up in the process. Rich's post highlighted some of the
difficulties as well.
PLATT:
Not only difficulties, but impossibilities. That's why Pirsig took pains
to acknowledge the futility of presenting a logical MOQ. But then he
said, “Ahh, do it anyway. It’s interesting" and goes on to define
Quality as best he can.
PIRSIG:
Quality doesn’t have to be defined. You understand it without
definition, ahead of definition. Quality is direct experience
independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions. (LILA, Chap. 5)
PLATT:
After saying Quality doesn’t have to be defined Pirsig defines
Quality as direct experience prior to intellectual abstractions. He
contradicts himself, but that's the name of the MOQ game. You can't
say what Quality is without smacking into the wall of logical
absurdity. Nor should this be surprising because all philosophy
eventually comes down to an inexplicable "black box" of obscurity,
that ultimate, mysterious place about which Wittgenstein said,
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must silent."
RICH:
I offer this:
1)Reality is Quality. Unpatterned, Undefinable, Undivided, God, Tao,
Brahman, etc.
2)Reality is Value. Patterned, Definable, Divided, Earth, Maya,
‘Concrete’ things and thoughts, etc.
3)No words apply to Quality, being the generator.
PLATT:
Rich runs into the same wall as Roger, Pirsig, Platt and everyone
else. "No words apply to Quality” is contradicted by saying "no
words apply to Quality" because these are words being applied to
Quality.
How do you describe Quality without using words? Logically you
can't. Quality transcends logic, reason and words.
But that doesn't mean Quality doesn't exist. You know it by being it--
direct experience. And by being it, there's no way to get outside of it
so you can define it.
Pirsig's time honored "Zen" solution to this dilemma is to offer us
stories--stories of jumping off a hot stove, of hearing a great song
for the first time, of having a heart attack, etc.
For me, these stories tell of experience broken down into two parts:
sensations and conceptions. Sensations are Dynamic Quality,
conceptions are static Quality.
Or, a more sophisticated breakdown of experience is to divide it into
four parts: 1) Prehensions (awareness without content), 2)
Sensations (awareness of generalized content), 3) Perceptions
(awareness of identifiable content) and 4) Conceptions (awareness
of symbols of identifiable content). Under this breakdown, Dynamic
Quality is 1 and 2 while static Quality is 3 and 4.
But, I could be wrong, even though, for now at least, the static
conceptual pattern of:
1) DQ = sensations
2) SQ = conceptions
3) Quality = experience
4) Experience = what I am
appears good to me.
Platt
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