Hello everyone On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 4:07 PM, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[email protected]> wrote: > [Dan] > There are not many MOQs. There is one, as far as I am concerned. Any other > theory should be called by another name, otherwise it leads to confusion. > > [Marsha] > RMP knows that there cannot be an absolute MoQ. > > [Arlo] > I've mentioned this before, but am going to chime in again. The problem here, > I > am convinced, is that we confuse a philosophical school (e.g., "pragmatism"), > with the view of a particular author (e.g., "Peirce"). > > If we equate "A Metaphysics of Quality" as a larger school encompassing, say, > all philosophical ideas derivative from the idea that Quality is the primary > empirical reality, then of course we can look at the competing thoughts of > authors working within that tradition.
Dan: What other competing authors have stated that Quality is the primary empirical reality? I don't know of any. Isn't that why Robert Pirsig's work stands out as original? (And please don't tell me Royce or I'll have to get the barf bag out.) >Arlo: > But if we equate "The Metaphysics of Quality" with the specific ideas of > Robert > Pirsig, then, no, there is not more than "one" MOQ. >> In the former case, we see competing ideas born of agreement and disagreement > (not all "idealists" agree, e.g.) and we can talk about which author makes > better points, and which author's overall theories are better than others. > > In the latter, we seek clarity into what Pirsig was saying, the overall goal > should be to speak with precision about what Pirsig wrote, and what he meant. > > This is the same in any philosophical dialogue, a Peircian scholar will want > to > speak with as much precision as possible about what Peirce wrote and about > extracting his intentional meaning from his writings. A pragmatics scholar > will > be more interested in first getting a large picture of all authors who could > be > classified as "pragmatists", and then comparing and contrasting and > contextualizing their ideas, their disagreements and their agreements. Dan: I did a quick Google search and all I found on the Metaphysics of Quality is work related to RMP's. As far as I know, it is his term alone. Can you point to another MOQ that I am unaware of? >Arlo: > The problem, to clarify, is that many here use "MOQ" to refer to both. Dan: Well, maybe. I think the problem is a basic lack of understanding. But be that as it may... >Arlo: > I wrote before that a large part of the confusion comes from the moment Pirsig > went back over his pages and swapped out "I say" for "The MOQ says", a > rhetorical device he felt would hold the narrative better, but I think has > resulted in these problems. I suggest everyone who has an electronic copy of > LILA goes in a changes the text back to Pirsig's original by replacing all > instances of "The MOQ says" with "I say" (or "Pirsig says", if you prefer > third > person narratives). Dan: This seems a bit wishy-washy to me. But whatever floats your boat.. > > In this light, arguing over one MOQ or many MOQs becomes easily dismissed. In > the sense that we are talking about Pirsig's ideas, we are talking about one, > in the sense that we are talking about competing ideas within the framework of > a Quality-based theory, we are talking about many. Dan: Again, who else has forwarded a Quality-based metaphysics like the MOQ? >Arlo: > In other words, Pirsig said one thing, but he is not the only voice speaking. Dan: Of course not. But those other voices are speaking of different theories, not the Metaphysics of Quality as outlined by Robert Pirsig. That is why it is not a metaphysics of quality... it is the Metaphysics of Quality. At least, in my opinion. Thank you, Dan 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
