Hello everyone ---------------------------------------- > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:14:54 +0100 > Subject: Re: [MD] Quality-as-pre-conceptual/MOQ as conceptual. > > Hi Dan > > 15 Mar. you wrote: > >> Thank you for writing. I notice you capitalize Quality so in a way >> you're correct. But everyone knows what quality is. That's Robert >> Pirsig's great insight, and that's why quality works where many >> other terms do not. > > Before Pirsig "...everyone knows what quality is" was not so > obvious
Dan: If someone doesn't know what quality is, they will not live long. How would they know good food from bad? Drinkable water from polluted? Warmth from cold? No, everyone knows what quality is, that's obvious. Bo: >and there are other grand concepts - "beauty" for instance > - and I would guess that "..everyone knows what beauty is" is just > as obvious. Dan: I would say, no, that's not obvious. I know Platt likes to equate quality with beauty and thats okay, to a point. But beauty to an artist and beauty to a non-artist is probably differently perceived. We tend to covet that with which we're familiar. Bo: >Pirsig even hints to a "code of Art=Beauty" beyond the > 4th.level meaning that IT may be the dynamic everything beyond > the static levels. Dan: I think he says he supposes it could be called a code of art, or something like that. But art and beauty are not necessarily synonymous. >Bo: > I just point to this because I see the Dynamic/Static split to be the > Quality of the MOQ because it makes for a better, non- > paradoxical, world than the Subject/Object split. Consequently I > dislike Pirsig's Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics of quality, the two are > identical Dan: I don't know exactly what you're getting at. "Meta-metaphysics? Where exactly did you get this? >Dan: >> I would ask you to please provide references for your "meta-level" >> but I know it's impossible; there are no references anywhere in Mr >> Pirsig's work that point to the MOQ as a "meta-level." I see you >> twisting certain passages into what their author never intended, and >> then claiming they support your own interpretation. >Bo: > You really are a "bible-thumper" Of course Pirsig says that the > MOQ is secondary - a mere intellectual pattern - but it is the > Metaphysics of Quality that creates the static intellectual level and > by no twist of logic can that level "contain" the MOQ. Ref. the > container example. If you find THAT un-problematic ...phew! Dan: The MOQ is not a thing that needs to be contained. It doesn't create the intellectual level; the MOQ uses the levels to organize reality. The container example? What container example? Refresh my memory. >Dan: >> The last time I looked, Robert Pirsig's name was on the cover of >> both ZMM and LILA. He is the author and inventor of the MOQ. I have >> a massive amount of respect. So if it is your contention that ZMM >> and LILA are not a product of Mr Pirsig's mind, then where did they >> come from? Why is his name on the books? >Bo: > Do you think a metaphysics (metaphysics=reality) can be copy- > righted? But your loyalty is impressive. Dan: Yes. Absolutely. I believe that intellectual property can be copyrighted. I believe LILA is copyrighted. It has nothing to do with loyalty. It's the law. >Dan: >> No, I don't hate criticisms of LC's annotations; they are not mine. >> I welcome them. I enjoy dissecting the annotations, comparing them >> to Mr Pirsig's previous work to find contradictions. i recall that >> Struan Hellier found a problem with one of the annotations and it >> was rectified (with Mr Pirsig's permission). > >> What I dislike is someone referring to the LC annotations in the >> dismissive fashion that you are wont to do. I've asked you in the >> past to please specify which annotations you have problems with and >> why but you've never taken the time. >Bo: > The 97 is mentioned, then there is 102 Dan: I see you've copied a small portion of annotation 102 below. To really do it justice, I think the entire annotation needs to be examined along with the post it addressed. Don't you? > > I see today more clearly than when I wrote the SODV > paper that the key to integrating the MOQ with science is > through philosophic idealism, which says that objects grow > out of ideas, not the other way around. > > To associate the MOQ with SOM's "subjective over objective" is its > death, but this "all is ideas" seems to be the latter-day Pirsig's > wont. Dan: I beg to differ: "The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination." [ZMM] Dan: This statement comes very early on in ZMM and it is a foundation for all that comes later. > > Since at the most primary level the observed and the > observer are both intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes > of quantum theory have to be conflicts of intellectual > assumption, not just conflicts of what is observed. > > "At the most primary level" must mean the metaphysical and the > DQ/SQ becomes "intellectual assumptions" which follows from the > "MOQ an intellectual pattern" sentence that follows from the faulty > Quality/MOQ thesis. Dan: I don't think Mr Pirsig is talking about his Quality metaphysics here. I think he is talking to a group of people unfamiliar with his MOQ and so he's structured his SODV paper to reflect that. > > Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed > always involves an interaction with ideas that have been > previously assumed..... >Bo: > How come that DQ is exempted from the idea-interaction? DQ is > after all part and parcel of the MOQ. According to Pirsig's Gravity > example there was no quality (in the MOQ sense) before the > MOQ. Dan: If you were to read Bohr's papers very carefully, you'd see that he makes very specific primary assumptions to set up all his experiments. These pre-assumptions are all the information Bohr allowed. He didn't allow for the conceptually unknown, or Dynamic Quality. That's where Mr Pirsig thought his MOQ might help illuminate Bohr's Framework of Complementarity. >Bo: > The MOQ is a fantastic achievement. It creates a new reality at an > infinitely greater scale than Newton's which was a mere > adjustment inside - what in moqish is - the static intellectual level. > It rejects the S/O split that among many has spawned the > "ideas/reality" one. The illusion that keeps it from being realized is > the wish to make the SOM-MOQ transition a smooth intellectual > adjustment. Intellect in SOM means the idea-interaction realm. In > MOQ the 4th. level is the SOM itself. And that is a leap over a > bottomless chasm. Dan: I think we agree the 4th level is the intellectual level. Here you state the intellectual level is the same as subject/object metaphysics. Yet just below you write: the MOQ which isn't an idea out of the his mind, but out the intellectual level that RMP was an unstable pattern of. So I take it you mean the MOQ isn't an idea, and it isn't Robert Pirsig's idea... wait... what do you mean? Robert Pirsig was (I thought he still is but I'm sure that's beside the point) a unstable intellectual pattern out of which the MOQ emerged? And there I was this afternoon thinking Craig had me flummoxed... >Dan: >> I know you're hung up on your SOL interpretation. I think that is >> your loss. In your zeal to spread the SOL word you continually >> overlook not only the LC annotations but Mr Pirsig's second book >> LILA. It appears to me you've seized on a few select passages from >> ZMM to support your thesis while ignoring the main thrust of the >> MOQ. >Bo: > I don't know if you have noticed, but DMB is slowly coming round. > When he started to "translate" ZAMM to moqish the SOL is > obvious. Steve Peterson has left (one doesn't admit anything, just > leaves) and Arlo discusses God knows what except the MOQ so > you are soon the last of the orthodox. Dan: I'm not interested in keeping score but I will tell you, if dmb is coming over to your side then I'll eat my monitor. I won't even chew it up. I'll swallow it whole. And I think Steve has started his own blog. I drop in to read it from time to time. Seriously, people just need to read the books. ZMM makes a great prelude and the MOQ is spelled out in quite some detail in LILA. For those who want to further investigate the MOQ there's LILA'S CHILD, Anthony McWatt's PhD thesis and DVD's, and several interviews with Mr Pirsig. In all that work, your SOL is touched upon once, in LC, where Mr Pirsig says: "This seems too restrictive. It seems to exclude non-subject-object constructions such as symbolic logic, higher mathematics, and computer languages from the intellectual level and gives them no home. Also, the term "quality" as used in the MOQ would be excluded from the intellectual level. In fact, the MOQ, which gives intellectual meaning to the term quality, would also have to be excluded from the intellectual level." [LC, annotation 50] I think that's what people have been trying to tell you for years. Are we all unstable intellectual patterns? I know that I'm a little teeterly sometimes but unstable? >Dan: >> I don't mean to sound harsh and I am sorry if my words come across >> that way. As I said, I have a great deal of respect for Robert >> Pirsig and his work, and that extends to his annotations in LILA'S >> CHILD. If anyone wants to criticize his work, they better be >> prepared to do more than talk a good game. >Bo: > No hard feelings Dan, your loyalty is with the person Pirsig, mine is > with the MOQ which isn't an idea out of the his mind, but out the > intellectual level that RMP was an unstable pattern of. > > In my (not sufficiently humble to be regarded as polite) opinion Dan: Thank you so much for taking some time to address my concerns. You're the best. Dan (aka The Last of the Bible-Thumpers) _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Life without walls. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_allup_1a_explore_032009 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/
