From: Steve & Oxsana Marquis (marquis@nccn.net)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 17:05:08 BST
Platt quotes Pirsig:
_______________________
"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
abstractions. Quality is indivisible, indefinable and unknowable in the
sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of
these things. Quality is a the primary empirical reality of the world."
(Lila, 5)
_______________________
Thanks for that. What I really was after was why SQ was left out of your
epigrams. This points at what I called our 'fascination' with the idea of
DQ. Further to the point, you post was entitled 'Epigrams to Quality', not
Dynamic Quality, but Quality w/o any qualifier. Yet from your response it
is clear you mean Dynamic or pre-metaphysical quality.
From the other responses and other threads I have been reading it appears
this is a recurrent theme. Discussion drifts more and more towards DQ, and
then someone mentions SQ or a balance between, and there's this collective
oh yeah, a re-centering, and then a drifting toward discussion of DQ again.
From the old salts on this list, is this a valid claim or am I reading too
much into this?
DQ without SQ is what; chaos, insanity? Is it even possible? Quality is DQ
+ SQ. Has to be.
My personal favorite depiction of DQ is the first passages of the
Tao-te-ching.
Wim writes:
______________________
We experience change only as 'good' to the extent that it creates new sq and
we only experience it as change because we had old sq in the first place.
I think a Metaphysics of Quality (in which "Quality" is made part of a
metaphysics and is not "pre-metaphysical " anymore, in Platt's term) should
stress the roles of DQ and sq equally. That doesn't mean that we (and
Pirsig) cannot have a personal preference for DQ and for making evolution go
a bit faster.
_____________________
Yes, there is no awareness of change (intuitive or otherwise) w/o sq for
measurement is comparative. There must be a before and after, a this and
that. Any 'described' experience makes use of comparison.
I like your comment on 'personal preference'. This points to the value of
different personality types. However, maybe habitual thinking / behavior
(the basis of the personality 'type'), even if that 'habit' is spontaneity,
results in a 'stuckness' for the individual. This is a bone of contention
that has cost me a friendship it looks like, and is the primary motivation
for joining MD right now, even though I've considered it for a long while.
Live well,
Steve
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Apr 03 2005 - 17:43:19 BST