From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Sun Aug 28 2005 - 13:35:25 BST
Ham and Reinier
27 Aug. hampday@earthlink.net wrote to Reinier who had written
I comment Reinier first:
> > I would argue very much in favour of the MoQ as a metaphysics.
> > I much more like the metaphysical aspects then the ethical.
> > (Almost every ethical discussion about the MoQ on this list goes
> > nowhere.) This is not to say I see the MoQ as a substitute for
> > religion, far from that. Equalizing DQ with God serves no other
> > purpose then getting the dreaded G-word in the discussions.
I very much agree with this. I have always felt embarrassed when
people try to find some ethical guide in the MOQ. It's "all is
morals" does also mean that there is "no morals" in the ethical
sense. In its rising static moral system the social level is where
ethics occurred.
> > The assertion made by someone about the statement 'Quality creates
> > object and subject' is, I think, a flaw. Pirsig doesn't say that
> > quality creates object and subject in a physical sense.
"In a physical sense" ;-). Maybe not but certainly in a
metaphysical sense. It is the static intellectual level IMO.
> > The whole
> > point is that object and subject do not exist.
Right, "they" - or the subject/object distinction - did not exist
before the intellectual level.
> > All that exists is
> > quality, Dynamic (or un-valued) or Static (or valued). Well to be
> > more precise, only dynamic quality would exist, static quality is
> > dynamic quality seen through judgmental glasses.
I agree completely.
> > Subject and object
> > are only that, valued quality, or static quality patterns.
Yes damn it, that is just what the SOL interpretation says:
Subjects and objects, or better the S/O distinction, is a static
quality pattern. The intellectual pattern itself.
HAM:
> For what it's worth, I like that analysis -- and your emphasis on the
> metaphysics. I really don't see how the sophists here can shoot holes
> in what you've stated. More significantly, it demonstrates in two
> short paragraphs what is needed to make the MoQ a logically workable
> metaphysics.
The SOL interpretation makes it workable, but for some reason
MOQ orthodoxy refuses to accept the inevitable.
> Now that you've shown us the problems, how do you propose to resolve
> them?
> One suggestion, which I've pointed out before, is that if the world we
> see "through judgmental glasses" is defined as "existence", then the
> Dynamic Quality that we don't see must transcend that existence.
Agree 100%
> For
> that reason, rather than asserting that "all that exists is Quality",
> I would say that Quality is the primary or essential reality. (Let
> the scholars battle over whether DQ logically "exists" or not.) In
> any case, that "we experience" is the pivotal point of existence.
> Without the locus of individual awareness there is no existence.
I would have liked to continue my agreement - and maybe we
agree only have different slants - however, individual awareness
smacks of SOM's mind/matter. According to the MOQ
"humankind" are all levels - or "awarenesses" if you like - and it
was the (at any time) top awareness that reacted dynamically and
created the next awareness level.
"Individual awareness" is intellectual awareness (only with
intellect the individual subject occur) and - correct - with intellect
the subject/object existence came to be, but DQ has from the
intellectual base gone on to a new Quality existence
> Is there Quality without the experience of it, then? There, you see,
> is Pirsig's dilemma. If he answers 'yes", he's a transcendentalist;
> if his answer is 'no', he's a nihilist: there is no point in
> existence.
Please Ham, don't talk until you understand the MOQ. First of all
it says that Quality=Experience=Reality. Thus your dilemma
dissolves - unless you insist on the intellectual point of view?
> As the MoQ now stands, man just happens to be here with no
> cosmic purpose behind his existence. It's not enough to say that the
> world moves toward "betterness" simply because there is Quality. Why
> even bother with an undifferentiated essence if it has no teleological
> meaning?
Up through the years people have suggested new metaphysics
based on other grand concepts (I ought to have made a list) and
MEANING is one of those that qualifies for a MOM. So there is
no need for us to rediscover the wheel, Pirsig has already done it
by choosing the mother of them all - QUALITY. "Meaning" and all
the rest is incorporated in it.
> That question, too, must be be resolved in order to complete >
the thesis. (You can see there's a lot of work remaining.)
Again try to understand the MOQ before cooking up problems
with it
Most friendly
Bo
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 Aug 28 2005 - 15:03:05 BST