Hey Steve, Pirsig: Whenever one talks about Dynamic Quality someone else can take whatever is said and make a static pattern out of it and then dialectically oppose that pattern. The best answer to the question, “What is Dynamic Quality?” is the ancient Vedic one—“Not this, not that.”
Steve said: Given this RMP statement (and all that talk about Quality being undefined), dmb's objections are just the sort of objections we can _always_ make to what _anyone_ says about DQ. The only way to avoid such objections is to shut the hell up about DQ, but then of course dmb objects to not talking about DQ as well. But it is just absurd from the start for dmb to claim that he has properly grasped something in the name of DQ that you and I have missed given that "DQ" is (among other Pirsigian usages of the term) a placeholder for what is lost as soon as you think you have grasped it. Matt: Weeeelllll, yeah, but. (That's the beginning and end of my official response. The rest is dialectical wheedling.) Pirsig's answer, too, is a static construction, and when you look at it as such (as anything that a pronoun can attach itself to is), then it serves exactly the purpose your expressing: when people become too dialectically uncompromising about DQ, one needs to remind them that technically, it is "not this, not that." On all sides. I'm not sure Dave is making the kind of objection that can always be made, but it looks implicitly that way, from my end, because I'm unclear on what the objection specifically is. In the last exchange, for example, he sees "blank page" and sees something pernicious; I see "blank page" and see something Eastern (which doesn't often happen to me, I might add). This as the objection is dialectically uncompromising, in the sense I used above, because it is unclear why Dave didn't interpret it the congenial way I did. And without that clarity, it becomes difficult to determine just what the objection is that clears the way for his reformulation. So in that sense, the Vedic response seems apropos and your explanation of why makes sense. We can always point to how a metaphor is going to self-destruct in your hands. The trick in handling a metaphor is knowing where not to grab it. However, in Dave's reformulation of DQ/creativity he brings up what he knows is a sore spot for me. This is why I interpret his objection as "How do you include the hot stove analogy?" And _this_ question is precisely not about DQ, but about Pirsig's philosophy which has a precisely defined set of coordinates for gaining evidence and illumination about. Also however, even if we move to the side the weird dialectical interactions between precisely defined things like Pirsig's philosophy and precisely undefined things like Dynamic Quality, there's _still_ a sense in which we must, I think, be careful about the Vedic response. I think it is only appropriate in _some_ situations, like what I called situations where some particular person is being "dialectically uncompromising." However, a situation where it does not seem appropriate is in the elaboration of one's philosophy that is precise in trying to include imprecision. This is why the analogical method of definition is so important to Pirsig's philosophy, particularly around the topic of DQ. We need to elaborate these analogies and metaphors, but we cannot become too stuck by them. I don't know how we know when we've become "too stuck," however, in a general sense, but I'm guessing our interactions with other philosophies is going to be the clue. (And this is an old saw from Hegel.) Matt 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
