Steve, Moqtalk.
7 Jan. u wrote: (thanks for you well-edited posts)
Dan had written:
> >>>> As you know, I don't subscribe to your theory that the MOQ is a
> >>>> "meta-level." The MOQ is Robert Pirsig's idea and as such is a
> >>>> collection of intellectual patterns of value.
Peter:
> >> I think 'meta-level' is appropriate because openness to the
> >> dynamic is
> >> like seeing the whole context (the actual levels) by stepping
> >> beyond the limits of the 4th level, the limitations of SOM. Besides
> >> MoQ is metaphysics!
Bo:
> > Right, the MOQ is a metaphysics, exactly what I have struggled
> > to express. Besides the 4th. level is static and can't contain the
> > very DQ/SQ system...
Steve:
> The intellectual level doesn't hope to contain "the very DQ/sq
> system." DQ is obviously not contained in a static level. The 4th
> level contains descriptions of DQ. The MOQ isn't reality itself, it
> is words about reality. You are confusing the menu and the food.
Bo now:
You say that the intellectual level contains descriptions of DQ
(which it doesn't, it says it's indefinable) but as the MOQ is an
intellectual pattern (by your logic) even DQ is a mere description.
- for where was Quality before Pirsig? I invoke ZAMM (page 30)
and replace Newton with Pirsig, Gravity with Quality, John
Sutherland with Steve Peterson, science with metaphysics and
the narrator with Bo Skutvik.
So Bo goes on. "For example, it seems completely
natural to presume that Quality existed before Robert
Pirsig. It would sound nutty to think that until the twentieth
century there was no Quality."
(Steve) "Of course".
"So when did this Quality start? Has it always existed?''
Steve Peterson is frowning, wondering what Bo is driving
at.
Bo says "Is the notion that before the beginning of the
earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before
the primal generation of anything, the Quality existed?".
(Steve) "Sure"
Bo continues: "Sitting there, having no mass of its own,
no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind because there
wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space
either, not anywhere...this Quality still existed?"
Now Steve seems not so sure.
"If that Quality existed" Bo says "..I honestly don't know
what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me
that Quality has passed every test of nonexistence there
is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence
that that Quality didn't have. Or a single metaphysical
attribute of existence Quality did have. And yet it is still
'common sense' to believe that Quality existed."
I'm not mocking Pirsig, it's just his splendid logic backfires. It's no
news that great scientific theories re-construct reality, and like a
crystallization spreads to include the past. A metaphysical
upheaval even more because the world has not experienced one
since SOM and it was gradual. Phaedrus of ZAMM tries correctly
to point this out and show that there were realities before the
scientific revolution - the levels below the 4th. - but Pirsig of LILA
forgets this and violates his own insight by making the MOQ a
mere description of a Quality reality that has existed from the
beginning of time.
Think for a change.
Bo
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