MP said to Andre: I disagree. [That Quality is known in experience and requires no faith.] To someone unaware of the concept of Quality, Quality is not self evident as Quality. The credit is given to talent, skill, intelligence, luck, vision, etc. in a clean and simple SOM manner. One has to have faith that Quality (undefined, ineffable, inconceivable, yet eternally the same) exists and drives those actions to be able to experience and affirm it as Quality over anything else; you can't prove its Quality any more than you can prove its God or a person's own hard earned talent or skill. That's faith, brother. Same faith as a faith in God when that faith is not held in opposition to reason.
dmb says: It's hard to tell what you mean by faith but the actual claim is that Quality is known to everyone in experience and doesn't require anyone to believe falsehoods or to hold beliefs in the absence of any supporting evidence. This is not a claim that says everyone one accepts the MOQ or any other metaphysical system. It is simply the claim that everybody has the capacity to know what's good and bad and exercises this ability in normal, everyday experience. Quality is the reason we pay more for rib eye streaks than we do for ground round. It's the reason good books sell and bad one don't. It's the reason little kids try not to skin their knees and why the deer run away from forest fires. It's the reason you voted. It's the reason you voted for one guy instead of the other. You got out of bed this morning because it seemed to have more quality than not getting out of bed. It's the reason we jump off hot stoves. This is all it means to say that Quality is known by everyone and not a faith-based belief. I can almost hear you saying, "Well, God is the reason I got out of bed and I prefer hamburgers, or some such thing". But Quality is not somewhere above and beyond such that we bring it to bear on the situation, such that we evaluated it in terms of an abstract concept of Quality. The term, as Pirsig uses it, refers to the situation as it's immediately experienced and felt. This can be positive or negative, as in the hot stove example, where you know the situation is bad before you can say why it's bad or even before you can distinguish yourself from the stove and the total situation. The Quality of the situation is the first thing you know, the first thing you feel. It's just not the kind of thing you can choose to accept or not and in fact it can be quite injurious to ignore or over-ride this immediately felt quality. Pirsig's metaphysical system is conceptual, of course, and can be scrutinized for its coherence and logical consistency, for the way it does or does not agree with experience. I don't think anyone would suggest that the system of intellectual descriptions itself is known in experience, but the Quality it talks about is. The term refers to experience as it's had and felt. In fact, about half of these examples are Pirsig's. _________________________________________________________________ Access your email online and on the go with Windows Live Hotmail. http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_AE_Access_022009 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/
