Hi dmb, Thanks for the post. My comments after your explanation. Mark > > Dan said: > We cannot think of Dynamic Quality as a mover. Dynamic Quality must be kept > concept-free. > > > Mark replied: > Why is this? What puts DQ out of the bounds of metaphysics? By labeling > Dynamic Quality as concept free, aren't you pointing towards a concept? How > do you get around this, by not talking about it? Are you suggesting that we > should not discuss DQ? If DQ is concept free, what is it besides concept > free? Please explain, I thought we were discussing concepts. > > > > dmb says: > > DQ can't be defined because the term refers to experience prior to > conceptualization. It is direct and immediate awareness, the empirical > reality you know before you can think about it. Obviously, definitions are > not pre-conceptual. To define something is to put limits on it. To > distinguish one idea or thing from another requires distinctions, the > drawing of lines and borders. But DQ is undivided experience or pure > experience or undifferentiated experience. > > This is the first and most basic distinction in the MOQ. This is the DQ/sq > split. There is no way to properly understand the MOQ without first grasping > the distinction between concepts (static quality) and reality (Dynamic > Quality). > > > "Mystics will tell you that once you've opened the door to metaphysics you > can say good-bye to any genuine understanding of reality. Thought is not a > path to reality. It sets obstacles in that path because when you try to use > thought to approach something that is prior to thought your thinking does > not carry you toward that something. It carries you away from it. To define > something is to subordinate it to a tangle of intellectual relationships. > And when you do that you destroy real understanding. 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 a 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. Ametaphysics > must be divisible, definable, and know able, or there isn't any metaphysics. > Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition and > since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a > "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical > absurdity." (Lila, chapter 5) >
[Mark] Yes, that is where it is left, at this point, as a logical absurdity. The Trouble with SOM (or Tribbles as it were). Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzSyLkPuUX8&feature=related For more about SOM's proliferation. This is of course where metaphysics comes in, as you say tossing out the SOM. Holistic phenomenon can be described, Brahman is a good example of that. Western thought is a bit behind, but can also be used. Therefore to say that Quality is outside of discussion is self-defeating, and not necessary. Different tools are needed. These tools are used to convey the awareness of Quality that you and I have, to others. By conceptualizing Dq as that which happens prior to conceptualization is one such effort. This is what you mean by first grasping distinctions. Yes, this is one path. By the way, I believe that mystics would consider their understanding of reality as genuine. Tricky words, all of these...with apologies to Pirsig. Cheers, Mark > > > > > 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/md/archives.html > 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/md/archives.html
