Hi Steve, Agreed again ... strictly MoQ is not reality, I said that. It's a pragmatic "description" of (model of) reality and Quality is the fundamental reality of which it is made ... the points you make to Bo are spot on (and you get to the issue about the intellectual level involving any number of evolved patterns, not just SOMism). I wonder if Bo will ever accept these arguments.
The thing is being comfortable with those strictly logical absurdities, (MoQ describing itself and describing Quality as undefinable) or the schizophrenia as you put it, of SOMist / MoQists hanging on to the hope that simplistic logic will help them fix that essence of the MoQ. That doesn't prevent the MoQ being a pragmatic model of reality with which to operate in the real world, it just doesn't happen to be a metaphysics in the accepted sense. (I think one of my first ever posts on MD was "I don't buy metaphysics ...") Ian On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 7:15 PM, Steven Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Ian, > > On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:27 PM, Ian Glendinning > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Bo, Steve, I hadn't spotted that, but where Steve says ... >> >> "Pirsig uses the word metaphysics from the pragmatist's perspective. >> He postulates that reality is Quality based on radical empiricism, but >> beyond that he does not claim to that he is describing how things >> actually are. That is an SOM game that he refuses to play." >> > > Ian: >> I think that's right ... I've got drawn into this metaphysics vs >> reality (map vs terrain) debate again ... and simply said the MoQist >> view is that the MoQ is reality, only the SOMist makes the distinction >> ... but Steve's point says it better. >> >> To rephrase my MOQist view ... The MoQ IS Reality "for all pragmatic intents >> and purposes", to further define / distinguish MoQ and Reality >> objectively ... is the SOMist(mug)'s game. > > Steve: > > I still think it is wrong to say that the Metaphysics of Quality is > reality. Quality is equated with reality not the metaphysics of > Quality. > > "Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is names about reality. > Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a > thirty-thousand page menu and no food." > > The MOQ is an attempt to define reality which is to say, define > Quality, which is why Pirsig is ambivalent about the whole project. > > "Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without > definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience > independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions. Quality is > indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a > knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A > metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't > any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of > dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside > definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially > a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity." > > The MOQ is an attempt to define something that the MOQ itself holds > outside of definition. > > Regards, > Steve > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
