DMB and Platt [Bo mentioned] --
You are both making the point I was trying to get across to Bo in my last post, namely that the MoQ is not a metaphysics but a euphemistic categorization of empirical phenomena or processes as "types of Quality". It is not metaphysics because it shuns the fundamental reality (Bo's Nothingness, my Essence) from which existence is derived.
Thus, DMB says:
It is a mischaracterization to call DQ "the fundamental metaphysical reality". It's not quite right to think of it as "man's sense" either. Pirsig's own phrase, "the primary empirical reality" characterizes it pretty well. But calling it a "fundamental metaphysical reality" gives it an a priori, ontological status, a claim that is avoided by calling it an empirical reality. To put it in the simplest terms, DQ is experience itself, an event, and not a thing. This empirical event is characterized as primary because it is the first and most basic kind of experience, the cutting edge of every moment. This is why it can't be defined. It's what you know ahead of definitions. And finally, it can't rightly be understood as limited to man's sense of value because DQ is the force by which we evolved, predates us by forever, and extends to the experience of every living creature and beyond. See, the MOQ is radically empirical. It says experience is reality. This is not to say that reality is the thing we experience or that it is encountered in experience. I mean, the primary empirical reality has to be understood outside of the subject-object framework.
And Platt concurs, somewhat more concisely (in my baseball analogy):
By making a split between "sense of value" and experience you have thrown a hanging curve ball. That pitch, my friend, is your good old subject/object worldview you predictably throw every time. An MOQ batter is waiting for that pitch, knowing really is no distinction between value and experience. To the MOQ batter they are one and the same. Consequently your pitch is a fat softball. Whamo -- out of the park.
As I gather from your comments, the MoQ is something of an "intermediate scheme" between the empirical reality defined by Science and the metaphysical reality posited by classical philosophers and supernaturalists. It denies the reality of subjects and objects (which, according to DMB, makes it "radically empirical"), and it also denies (or is at least agnostic concerning) the primary source. Yet, it is emphatic in insisting that it's the interaction or competition of four levels of Quality which accounts for the "event" we call experience.
One of the problems I have with Pirsig's equivalency theory (i.e., Quality = Experience = Value = Reality) is that it makes rational analysis impossible. Thus, DMB says "DQ is experience itself", while Platt says that "Value is Experience". Since they're all one and the same, any epistemology or ontology is off limits, which I suppose is a clever way to avoid criticism. The downside is that one has to accept the whole doctrine on faith, since any question (such as asking for a proper definition) effectively puts the questioner in the "disbeliever" camp. I find it wonderously strange that an anti-theistic philosopher who is identified as a radical empiricist has in effect advanced a faith-based thesis. (Michael will appreciate the irony here.)
But I'm also quite certain you gentlemen don't see it that way. Respectfully yours, Ham 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/
