Bo said to dmb:
So, it's my assertion that the MOQ's DQ/SQ is how reality is which is the
grievance (and what reification means)? However it is was Phaedrus' mission to
replace the S/O monster that has been (Western Culture's) scourge for so long
and had kept us under its S/O spell and closed us off from the real objective
experience. Sentenced us to eternal imprisonment within our subjective
max-security jail. And does DMB in ernest think that the MOQ is a mere
reiteration of SOM? That its DQ/SQ arrangement is just another abstraction of
concrete reality? Huh? Wasn't it Pirsig who set out to give the Western Culture
reality back? ...[insults deleted]
dmb says:
Apologies to Horse for dragging Bo's words into this forum. The quote from Bo
is such a neat piece of evidence that I couldn't resist. Sorry and I promise
not to make a habit of it.
MOQers, please notice that Bo really does not understand what reification means
and instead of addressing the objection I've posed, he simply re-asserts the
same error. The MOQ's static-Dynamic distinction is not just an abstract idea,
it's how reality is, he says. If the DQ/sq split is just another abstraction,
he says, then the MOQ is a mere reiteration of SOM. In several different ways,
Bo quite adamantly asserts that the MOQ is the food and not the menu. This is
what reification means. Of course this is exactly the opposite of what Pirsig
actually says and so Bo has to insult the author, which I deleted, and dismiss
his second book, which is the more philosophically serious book....
"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. 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 definition,
this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in
terms, a logical absurdity." (Pirsig in Lila)
"Subjects and objects are secondary. THEY ARE CONCEPTS DERIVED FROM SOMETHING
MORE FUNDAMENTAL WHICH HE (James) DESCRIBED AS "THE IMMEDIATE FLUX OF LIFE
WHICH FURNISHES THE MATERIAL TO OUR LATER REFLECTION WITH ITS CONCEPTUAL
CATEGORIES." In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective
thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject and object,
mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them." (Pirsig
in Lila)
"There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the
former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing."
(Pirsig in Lila)
dmb continues:
At the risk of insulting your intelligence, in Pirsig's restaurant analogy the
metaphysical menu stands for static concepts and dynamic reality itself is the
food. Bo is eating the menu. That's what reification means. And yet Marsha says
she hates reification and loves Bo. It doesn't take a certified public
accountant to see how that doesn't add up. Like any other conceptual
arrangement, metaphysics must be full of defined terms, conceptual distinctions
and intellectual abstractions. But that's exactly what dynamic reality is not.
The distinctions we make are conceptual and that fact applies to the conceptual
distinctions Pirsig made in constructing the MOQ. Why wouldn't it? The MOQ is
supposed to be a better set of concepts and not least of all because it makes
concepts subservient to the dynamic reality from which they emerge, but it is
still a huge mistake to confuse reality with our names for reality, our defined
metaphysical concepts about reality.
The point of the mystic's objection to metaphysics is to say that dynamic
reality itself can only be known only non-conceptually. And the point of the
pragmatic theory of truth is to say there is no single exclusive truth that
matches the way reality really is. The MOQ is one of many pictures that hang in
the gallery of truth, like any other conceptual arrangement. In fact, it is SOM
that says otherwise, that does insist on a single true abstraction portrait...
"Unlike subject-object metaphysics the Metaphysics of Quality does not insist
on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be the
ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of things - that
which corresponds to the 'objective' world - and all other constructions are
unreal. But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it
becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't
seek the absolute Truth.' One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual
explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the
future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something
better comes along. One can then examine intellectual realities the same way
one examines paintings in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which
one is the 'real' painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of
value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and
we can perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so is,
in part, the result of ourhistory and current patterns of values." (Pirsig in
Lila)
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