Hi dmb, dmb: > It's a silly kind of specious reasoning. Goes something like this: "You said > your feelings were beyond words but you were using words when you said that, > so your feelings are not at all beyond words." It's not just that the logic > is goofy. It also has a way of just breezing right past the meaning and > substance of the feelings and the claim about them and instead redirects the > focus of attention to a rather trivial and irrelevant point.
Steve: The analogy goes like this: saying that feelings are beyond words is not done to point out the feelings and words are not the same thing. (That is what would be "trivial and irrelevant".) It is done as a verbal description of the feelings. dmb: > It goes without saying, I suppose, but the nature of this medium is such that > words and concepts are the whole game. That's what we get in Pirsig's books > and that's what the MOQ is made of. This whole deal is static intellectual > quality from wall to wall and that's not a problem. The central term within > this system of static concepts is static and conceptual, of course, but it > REFERS to direct experience prior to static concepts. The term itself is > static and intellectual, because that's how talking works, but it POINTS to > the immediate experience itself. I mean, the words "static" and "Dynamic" > mean what they mean in relation to each other. They are opposites. That's > what they mean when we're talking about the MOQ. Nobody thinks experience > itself can be known directly through an e-mail. So we are just talking about > the MOQ's concepts and what they mean in static intellectual terms, with > words. No problem if some of those words dare to reference something other > than more word > s. Gasp! > > DQ is the pre-verbal present, which is exactly what compliments after the > fact are NOT. By conflating DQ with DQ-talk, you have converted DQ into sq. > To say DQ is a compliment paid after the fact is to say that the dynamic > present is the static past. It's nonsense. To say DQ-talk is talk is to > belabor the trivial and the obvious for no good reason. It's no good either > way. Steve: DQ as compliment paid after the fact is just one of the ways that Pirsig wields the term. Anyway. So, Matt and I would say something like, "I don't see the problem. I totally get that DQ is a central concept of the MOQ. That goes without saying." Then you would say something like, "no, I mean DQ _itself_ is central to the MOQ, not the _concept_ of DQ. DQ itself." Right? But then Matt and I can't figure out how you could think you are saying something different from what we just said. You are clearly behaving as though you were strongly disagreeing with us, but as a central term of Pirsig's conceptual framework known as the MOQ, of course we agree that "DQ itself" is an important concept which refers not to the concept of "DQ itself" but to DQ, WHICH IS THE CENTRAL CONCEPT OF THE MOQ. Matt and I think we just ended where we started with no better idea about where our conceptions of DQ aren't in alignment with yours, but in that sort of exchange you want to claim that you succeeded somewhere where Matt and I failed. You got closer to primary reality than we did, and you managed it through your objections to us. In your uses of language, you jumped out of language farther than we did with our uses of language. How could that work when we see language as a way of using reality rather than the way we capture reality (i.e., when we distinguish "primary reality" from "secondary" conceptions about reality)? If language (in the Pirsigian primary/secondary distinction) is always inadequate to reality (secondary, the first cousin once removed from reality) then how did you do any better than we did in using words to get past words to primary reality? Best, Steve 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
