From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 06 2002 - 08:07:32 GMT
Hi Platt, Steve, Jonathan.
I would say that the levels are forms of description, so 'ways of valuing'
seems right to me. Pirsig is clearly 'coming out' as a philosophical
idealist, so reality is formed by our ideas (roughly speaking). Different
levels cannot perceive each other, 'they have very little to do with each
other' except at the 'machine language' type interfaces.
Also, I'm quite happy to accept that DQ is the highest good, it's just that
there's no way of talking about it coherently. I'm suspicious of the
equation of DQ with freedom, for as Pirsig says somewhere, we won't know
whether it's DQ or degeneracy for a hundred years. According to the MoQ -
which Pirsig describes as a description of the static levels - the intellect
is the highest good that we can talk about, ie it is the highest static
level, more valuable than those below.
Pirsig writes:
"It is only Dynamic Quality I think is impossible to define. I think
definition is both possible and desirable for the static levels." (LC 44)
and
"If we could say where Dynamic quality came from it wouldn't be Dynamic."
(LC 89)
Somewhere Pirsig does say that intellectual level conversation depends on
definition, but I can't track that down right now.
Pirsig does equate 'consciousness' with the intellectual level though, so I
quite like Platt's 'addition'.
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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