From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 07:47:03 GMT
Hi David,
I suspected this was a case of sloppy language and you'd agree with Rick's
point (and maybe with my similar point that i made before seeing Rick's).
>I should add that the shift from substance to inorganic patterns of
>value...
I wonder though why people consistently say "inorganic patterns of value"
rather than just "patterns of value". "Inorganic patterns" sounds like
"stuff" that is at the inorganic level. An inorganic pattern of value is a
pattern that has no organic 'life' to it, such as molecules and atoms and
electromagnetism and gravity. As soon as you name a level, you give it a
reality in that pattern, you give it the 'stuff' of that level. You have to
speak of 'patterns of value' in general to keep it in the abstract MOQ
realm.
>From: David Buchanan <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: "'moq_discuss@moq.org'" <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: RE: MD Pirsig the postmodernist?
>Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 10:25:36 -0700
>
>Rick and y'all:
>
>DMB said:
>The linguistic shift to inorganic patterns of value, then, is meant to
>overcome the metaphysical assumptions about the data, while retaining the
>data itself.
>
>RICK replied:
> I agree with this comment on its own. But when it's combined with
>your
>assertion that, "...Pirsig's attack is upon a METAPHYSICS of substance, not
>substance itself...", you seem to be arguing that Pirsig is saying the
>'data' really is of 'substance itself'; An argument which at best fails to
>realize the full-promise of Pirsig's redescription of reality in terms of
>value, and at worst raises the specter of 'matter' (and thus, all things
>SOM). But I would submit to you that this identification of "data" with
>"substance itself" is precisely what Pirsig was trying to avoid by
>redescribing "substance" as an "inorganic pattern of values" because in a
>Metaphysics of Quality, 'empirical data' flows directly from the
>pre-intellectual, cutting-edge of reality... Dynamic Quality.
>
>DMB says:
>Excellent post. Bravo. I stand corrected. And I think you're quite right. I
>should have said, "Pirsig's attack is upon a METAPHYSICS of substance, but
>not the data, properties or values from which we deduce substance" or
>something like that. Its not easy to be precise about this, which is why am
>so impressed with your efforts on this matter.
>
>I should add that the shift from substance to inorganic patterns of value
>also manages to save the data and the world without making any kind of
>declarations about what is really is. He seems to be saying is that all we
>have are the data and that is quite enough. We don't have some deduced
>thing
>in which qualities appear, we just have the qualites or values themselves.
>I
>think this saves him from those dreaded foundations, from solipsism, from
>nihilism, and as you point out, allows "the integration of physical science
>with other areas of experience". In other words, this shift really has some
>important pay offs later down the line when things get more complicated.
>From the opening of chapter 8....
>
>"Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through
>imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They
>regard fields such as art, morality, religion and metaphysics as
>unverifiable. The MOQ varies from this by saying that the values of art and
>morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and that in the past
>they have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons."
>
>Thanks tons,
>DMB
>
>
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