From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Mon May 31 2004 - 22:35:38 BST
Hi storeyd (DavidS?)
Thanks for the cogent and extremely beautiful look at the SQ/DQ
relationship, which I've reproduced below. You pack a lot of
analysis and history of philosophy into amazingly few words.
I'm stumped however by what appears to me to be a devastating blow to
the driving force behind the MOQ. Let me quote you:
"DQ and SQ are not properly regarded as things or entities, because
they're not even really two separate referents. they are distinct
signs for the same referent, what we call Quality (of the Tao, elan
vital, the Force, whatever works). IN the Zen tradition, we would
just call this nonduality; the final leap is realizing that nirvana
(DQ) and samsara(SQ) are not-two. Niether one "gives way" to the
other, or leaves the other "in its wake". it's not a matter of
hierarchical subordination or prioritization. SQ is what DQ LOOKS
LIKE in any given instantiation, but the terms themselves are just
our way of describing that."
msh asks:
If the terms are different signs for the same referent, the way "msh"
and "Heyman" both refer to me, then what drives moral evolution?
What is it that agitates SQ value patterns? What is the latching
mechanism all about?
Any help here will be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Mark Steven Heyman/msh
On 31 May 2004 at 12:51, storeyd wrote:
Hi all,
Just some ideas towards resolving this DQ/SQ debate, re: which has
priority, what is the nature of their inter-relation, etc.
I think we've always gotta be careful about splicing DQ and SQ
into another metaphysical platypi--that is the last thing Pirsig
would want anyone to do; even to talk about them as "things" (or
"essences" or "substances") is to drag them into the metaphysical
mud. And I think what Pirsig is getting at is, at least in the
traditional sense, perfectly un-metaphysical. So when we say "MOQ",
what that "M" stands for is--we should always be keeping in mind and,
more importantly, conveying to others whom we are trying to explain
the ideas to--a rather radical notion of metaphysics. What Pirsig IS
trying to do is grapple with and provide an inclusive picture of the
nature of the manifest universe. In the Western philosophical
tradition this was called metaphysics, and was typically done with a
ready-made set of logical categories, which shifted shapes and
appearances throughout the centuries. When we get to Hegel, however,
the crystal palace reaches its summit; the center cannot hold, the
lie is out and naked; Nietzsche and Heidegger call the lie, humpty-
dumpty comes tumbling down, and the wake of that implosion is the
twentieth century: the cry was "back to Kant", which is to say, back
to a skepticism towards metaphysics, understood as the science that
tries to sketch large, all-encompassing pictures of reality. But the
problem was never trying to map reality--the problem was the quality
of the maps that had been hitherto produced, the mental-conceptual
tools with which those maps were being drawn, and, most importantly,
the mapmakers themselves (what we call the SOM'ers!)...and,
philosophically, what we get from this collapse is a set of
fragmentary, humble, descriptive disciplines, all, in different ways
and to varying degrees, off-shoots of Heidegger: phenomenology and
hermeneutics. These disciplines, which deal with, respecitively,
individual and collective meaning (that is, meaning/consciousness
WITHIN and BETWEEN individuals), were dissociated entirely from the
scientific disciplines, which dealt totally with the outside world,
which was certifiably identified with the NATURE OF REALITY, which
is precisely the territory that the old metaphysics were trying to
map with the cartographical tools of SOM. Critical theory, the other
discipline that spun out of the metaphysical rubble (from Hegel's
darkstar twin Karl Marx), dealt with both outsides AND social
interactions, so it has, as it were, one foot in science, and one
foot in philosophy. Again, however, critical theory could never
brook that gulf between the inside and the outside, because it never
believed in insides at all.
My overall point is that the major philosophical schools of the
twentieth century--phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory
were all using broken remnants, rusty tools, conceptual frameworks,
etc., passed down from the metaphysical tradition of the West, yet in
almost all cases, they denied that tradition entirely (this is true
as far as ethics goes--even the schools of emotivism, e.g. G.E.
Moore, which basically deny true, metaphysically grounded morality,
presuppose and utilize a moral vocabulary they inherited from
Aristotelian ethics, and basically cut off the branch that they're
sitting on). The disciplins themselves are actually quite modest,
and not very ambitious in their scope.
But where did the drive/desire/impetus for cosmic map-making go?
Right into science. Philosophy retreated into the cave of
epistemology, and science rushed boldly into the metaphysical light.
But what is so fascinating is that the major streams in science, on
separate tracks and in their own ways, ran in to a major problem
(especially physics and biology)...the Newtonian and Darwinian
paradigms were inadequate. They couldn't explain the data. The HUP,
Bell's Theorem, and the theory of emergent evolution cast the old
static, essentialist, physical-laws-as-gods paradigm into the
wastebin...because the new scientific theories don't work without
consciousness at all levels of reality...in the end, it's the only
way to explain the data. there's nothing subjective or speculative
or wishywashy about it, it's merely the best map we can make. So
what we can do now--and what people like Pirsig are doing--is take
all these different streams of knowledge, and the old metaphysical
traditions, and yoke them under an evolutionary context. And in this
context, dualisms are dyads. DQ and SQ are not properly regarded as
things or entities, because they're not even really two separate
referents. they are distinct signs for the same referent, what we
call Quality (of the Tao, elan vital, the Force, whatever works). IN
the Zen tradition, we would just call this nonduality; the final leap
is realizing that nirvana (DQ) and samsara(SQ) are not-two. Niether
one "gives way" to the other, or leaves the other "in its wake".
it's not a matter of hierarchical subordination or prioritization.
SQ is what DQ LOOKS LIKE in any given instantiation, but the terms
themselves are just our way of describing that. Because in this new
evolutionary metaphysics, there are no simple "things" lying around
to look at; all thinghood is thinghood-in-relation. All thinghood is
partial. All thinghood is a pattern of value, what Buddhism calls a
"karmic pattern", an inherited, stable organization of evolutionary
baggage.
As Pirsig says, Lila is nothing more and nothing less than a set of
patterns of value; nobody's home. Lila is, quite literally, no-thing
(not nothing!), she is no particular thing at all, you cannot pin her
down precisely because you cannot pin evolution down; you can talk
about her, talk to her, study her, kiss her, make love to her, or
hate her, but you cannot possess her with words or deeds, because you
can't possess anything with any absolute certainty. Because DQ is
totally beyond the economy of language, but we can talk about it
precisely because language is MADE OF IT in the first place. So what
has Pirsig really created then? He has created a static pattern of
representation for Quality, which we strive to experience ourselves,
communicate to each other, and understand. The MOQ IS ITSELF a
static pattern of value that we are all co-creating/enacting.
"Quality" is yet another name--call them transendental signifiers--
for the divine (tao, god, brahman, etc.), and as long as we always
realize that "the true tao is that which cannot be spoken of"--and
also that "the true Tao is that from which one cannot deviate"--then
we're in the clear.
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