dmb said to Andre: Yes, static quality is patterned and Dynamic Quality is not patterned. But this doesn't mean that concepts (SPOV) are unreal. In the art gallery analogy, where we can look at a variety of sets of static patterns, all the paintings are equally real. If you were to pick one and say that it's the real one while the others aren't, that would be an illusion. It's illusory in the sense that you'd be taking derived concepts as more real than the reality from which they were derived. I suppose your question arises from something like that.
Andre replied:So the MoQ as a 'derived conceptual framework' is not different from the reality (DQ/SQ) it describes? If you agree with this, then what is language as a pattern of value (both spoken and written)? Does it exist in an 'objective/subjective' sense (as SOM would have it) or does the MoQ challenge this? If so, in what way? Is this a legitimate line of questioning or not (in the sense that; "Am I going wacko now?") dmb says: Hmmm. To be honest, these questions don't make much sense to me, probably because we have different ideas about what the operative terms actually mean. Further, we have different ideas about them because Bodvar has confused you. And that, by the way, is exactly why I criticize his SOL. Believe me, you're not the first one to be led astray and you probably won't be the last. In the first sentence, for example, the distinction between DQ and SQ is construed as the reality described by the MOQ's conceptual framework but actually that distinction is just part of the MOQ's conceptual framework. In effect, then, the question becomes something like, "so the conceptual framework is not different from the conceptual framework? But the issue concerns the difference between concepts and reality. Let me try a different approach to try to get at it. There is an interesting parallel between chapter 29 of ZAMM and chapter 29 of Lila. It's one I hadn't noticed before and now I wonder if the two books aren't filled with such parallels. Anyway, in this case, the parallel can be seen to center around the issue of empiricism. In ZAMM we see that Plato is essentially anti-empirical while in Lila we see that Pirsig and James are racially empirical. The difference could hardly be more stark. In ZAMM we see that for Plato the abstract concept of of "horseness" is more real than actual horses. For Plato, the living creatures we know in experience are seen as merely fleeting and transitory while the ideal form of horseness is fixed and permanent and so that's what's real. And that's what he does to Quality. He converts it into a fixed, permanent idea. Radical empiricists, on the other hand, would say that's exactly backwards. Instead, they say abstract concepts are derived from experience, that experience comes first and abstractions are secondary and are only meaningful and useful insofar as they refer to the experiences from which they are derived. And so it is with the conceptual framework of the MOQ. That's why there is a discrepancy between concepts and reality, where reality is experience itself. That's why Pirsig says that the MOQ is different from the DQ it talks about. Talk, philosophical talk anyway, is conceptual while DQ itself is pre-conceptual experience. Talk is full of patterns and definitions and discrete conceptual entities while the DQ it talks about is pre-conceptual, undifferentiated, unpatterned. These last three terms are interchangeable and mean the same thing, by the way. Thanks to Paul Turner's recent comments, where he shares Pirsig's letter with us, your second question has already been answered. Language begins at the social level but it is also intellectual, depending on how you use it. You can use it to explain the theory of relativity and you can use it to say "good morning, sweetheart". As Pirsig shows with respect to the Sophists, you can also use it to teach Quality. The third question might be answered by this. In the MOQ, language is both social and intellectual rather than subjective or objective. According to SOM, objective reality is the physical reality and if you want to translate that into the terms of the MOQ that means inorganic and biological. In that case, language can be written on stone or made audible through voice boxes and tongues so that in a sense language involves the whole range of static patterns. The one thing it is NOT, however, is Dynamic. So we can say DQ is not only pre-conceptual and pre-intellectual but also pre-verbal. And this bring us back to the original point of contention; that there is a discrepancy between experience (the primary empirical reality) and concepts. In order to buy into Bo's SOL one must disregard a whole series of Pirsig's statements. One would have to take quote after quote, rip it out of Pirsig's books and throw them away. In chapter five of Lila for example, he says, "Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a 30,000 page menu and no food." Bo will tell you this is nonsense, but Pirsig says the same thing over and over. "The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is 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 of definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality' is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity." As we all know, Pirsig went ahead and created the MOQ despite this discrepancy, this logical contradiction, this act of degeneracy because, "getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life" and "the only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born". "As long as you're inside a logical, coherent universe of thought you can't escape metaphysics." And, as we all know, Pirsig then goes on to introduce the terms static and dynamic so that "the reality that Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book" becomes Dynamic Quality. This term refers to the pre-conceptual "primary empirical reality of the world". Unless you simply avoid metaphysics altogether, this reality is going to get named. The second best thing to do, then, is give it names that indicate it's undefinable nature and explain why it can't be defined. This is where radical empiricism comes to the rescue. It gives us an epistemological explanation as to why DQ can't be defined. It says this undefinable reality is "pure experience" or "the immediate flux of life". These are names to be sure, but they name the pre-conceptual empirical reality, the cutting edge of experience as its felt prior to the concepts we impose on it. And finally, to answer your last question, no. I do not think you're "going wacko". I think you're just one of Bo's unfortunate victims. Pay a lot less attention to him and a lot more attention to Pirsig and you'll be just fine. It might seem that this is an attack on Bo but that's not how I see it. I see it as a defense of the MOQ. Bo's the attacker and I'm just playing a defensive role. This, I think, is testified to by the fact that I can quote Pirsig all day long to make my case while Bo has to throw all the quotes out the window to make his case. As I see it, his theory has already been defeated many times. He's not yet scored a single point. It's just that he doesn't realize it yet. And if the future is anything like the past, he never will realize it. I hope that helps. I really do. _________________________________________________________________ Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=TXT_MSGTX_WL_HM_express_032009#colortheme 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/
