Bo, I can see that you think there is some kind of problem but I can't make any sense of it. What, exactly, is the problem? Despite your efforts, I think the whole thing is based on some rather profound misconceptions and you take these misconceived ideas for granted so that they are never made explicit. The charts really don't work in this format, by the way. In other words, what you say makes no sense because of what you're not saying. For example, you think Pirsig's summary "goes against the grain of the MOQ" but I don't see how. In fact, we don't even need the summary (The MOQ itself is static and should be separated from the Dynamic Quality it talks about) because he says essentially the same thing about 50 different ways. Examples would include the quote about the radical empiricism of William James (from chapter 29 of Lila) that you used. But this same idea is also expressed in the hot stove example, his equation of Quality with the Tao, the many references to philosophical mysticism and his moving train analogy just to name a few. Not only do I fail to see why you think Pirsig's summary "goes against the grain", I also think this notion is the heart and soul of what Pirsig is saying, the key to both of his books. To reject that is to reject just about everything about the MOQ.
I suspect that one of the major misconceptions that has you so at odds with this key idea has to do with what it means to say that Dynamic Quality is pre-intellectual experience. There are many ways to express this notion and Pirsig uses lots of them. It can also be called "nothingness", "the cutting edge of experience", "the primary empirical reality" or "pre-verbal experience". There is also Northrop's "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum", "undivided reality", Dewey's "immediate experience" or "initial situation", James's "immediate flux of life" as well as his "pure experience". We see it the explanation of the way infants experience reality. You can use any of these terms or any of the examples named above to express the same idea. They all refer to the same unnamable, undefinable, ineffable reality. I think that you are interpreting "pre-intellectual" to mean social static patterns but that's simply incorrect. It's not static at all. This misconception would certainly explain why you make so little of philosophical mysticism and why you think it's a problem to say DQ and a metaphysical system are two different things. "Anything that is undefined is outside metaphysics, since metaphysics can only function with defined terms. ...By even using the term 'Quality' he had already violated the nothingness of mystic reality. ..Even the name, 'Quality' was a kind of definition since it tended to associate mystic reality with certain fixed and limited understandings." (opening of chapter 9) "Some of the most honored philosophers in history have been mystics: ...They share a common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language; that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided. ...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." (few pages into chapter 5, emphasis is Pirsig's) "The MOQ associates religious mysticism with Dynamic Quality but it would certainly be a mistake to think that the MOQ endorses the static beliefs of any particular religious sect. ...He thought about how once this integration occurs and Dynamic Quality is identified with religious mysticism it produces an avalanche of information as to what Dynamic Quality is." (middle of chapter 30) "Phaedrus hoped his Quality metaphysics was something that would get past the immune system and show that American Indian mysticism is not something alien from American culture. It's a deep submerged hidden root of it. American don't have to go to the Orient to learn what this mysticism stuff is about. It's been right here in America all along. ...Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or anything else definable,.." (the concluding paragraphs of Lila at the end of chapter 32) Pirsig also explains that he has to hammer away at this idea (giving us about 50 different ways to get at it including empiricism, philosophical mysticism, religious mysticism, Indian religion, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, art, motorcycle maintenance, sailing, developmental psychology, his theory of insanity, cultural contrarians, his own biography, metaphysics, countless examples, analogies and metaphors) because Western culture has a blind spot here. But it's also pretty clear that you're rejecting a notion that appears over and over from beginning to end. To interpret the MOQ in such a way that you reject this notion is not just a different way to look at it. It's way wrong. It's an MOQ killer. Other people do this too. Matt K springs to mind on this score. But Bo, I really think you're missing the boat, big time. It goes right to the heart of what Pirisg means by Quality. That's what the whole thing is about and yet you see it as a problem, as a mistake. If it is a mistake, then Pirsig makes that mistake on virtual every page, in virtually every line he's ever written about Quality. If rejecting that is not a distortion, then it's hard to imagine what a distortion would look like. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_allup_explore_012009 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/
