Hey Dan, Dan said: ...going back to your implicit rejection of all other possibilities... isn't it more a matter of simply ignoring that which has no value according to our social mores? To reject a possible point of value assumes that it has been considered... however, in most cases no consideration has been made at all.
Matt: I guess I don't really see a conceptual difference between my "implicit rejection" and your "ignoring" to get at issue we were discussing. (Except that "ignoring" can still be something you actively do, like rejection, and I'm after the ultimate conceptual passivity, which is implicitness. But as your concern seems to be exactly that kind of "no [active] consideration" case, we seem to be in accord.) Matt said: Maybe it's that I still don't understand what difference that makes a difference there is between "negative" (which is a static term in your view) and "low" (which you approve for use in describing a DQ-perception). Dan said: Well... I'm not so sure I approve of "low" but we have to use some kind of symbolic representation of what we mean by Dynamic Quality while simultaneously keeping "it" concept-free. That can be tricky. It might be best not to speak of Dynamic Quality at all but then how do we further the intellectual value of the MOQ? Matt: Hunh... Well, bear in mind that I was using "low" because _you_ introduced it. I assumed that meant it was okay for us to use the term in a stipulated way, which I took from your usage (and clarified explicitly by pairing it against "negative"). Your big "but," I think, gets at a kind of instinct of quietism, with respect to DQ and metaphysics, that I don't feel anymore. I feel like I'm at a place where I understand what it means to say something wrong about DQ, while at the same time understanding that some sayings are good. I think it is this skittishness that produces the below comments on your part. And I honestly can't just wave away the skittishness because it's those instincts that occasionally provide the corrective against the re-inflation of Platonism, which I take it is a kind of hypochondria that we must always look out for (I say with a nod to Dave). You go on to say that you think "Dynamic Quality comes before the coin" of better/worse in the MoQ. I still don't think that is a correct apprehension of how Pirsig describes the MoQ. But as this is an issue of scholarship, the task of amassing evidence and counter-evidence is yet the task not done. Matt said: What I don't see in your wish to reverse my formulation is an attempt to tackle the problem that seems to lie in connecting (what we might call) evolutionary-DQ and experiential-DQ. Dan said: I might well be wrong but here I'm sensing static quality definitions creeping in and labeling Dynamic Quality... Matt: As your first response, I want to call this your quietistic instinct. And realize, I don't want to put down the instinct. However, I haven't the faintest idea how you can wield it against me without having the same sense for everything _you_ wrote afterwards. I assume that for the sake of conversation, in the MD we have all decided, more or less and for better or for worse, that we're going to put aside quietism in order to talk about things. We can all be quiet in the safety of our own homes (and real, non-MD lives). Dan said: This seems (to me) that the key to tying together your "evolutionary-DQ" and "experiential-DQ" is that experience is leading us all somewhere... we are evolving as we speak... and we cannot say where that somewhere is. The nature of evolution isn't found among bones and debris from the past... it is right here, right now. Matt: Yeah, that sounds right, but what about the differentiation in static compartments of the train-of-self that for Pirsig also represents a longitudinal evolutionary history, not just a personal history? I think there's a difference in context for DQ in Pirsig's texts that forces us to recognize a difference between the evolution of a group and the evolution of an individual. I haven't provided textual evidence, but my recent posts have been prodding in that direction by a sense that this is true. The "nature of evolution" may not be found amongst bones and debris, but why would Pirsig differentiate between some of the bones and debris at all if it weren't in some sense important? Matt said: I can't cite Pirsig passages, but I can't imagine Pirsig denying the point that mammalian biological patterns enabled social patterns whereas (as of yet) reptilian patterns did not, let alone plant biological patterns. Dan said: I'm not sure what point you're making here. Again, it isn't that biological patterns enabled social patterns... Dynamic Quality enables static quality patterns leaving a historical evolutionary footprint. If not for the response to Dynamic Quality there would be no social or intellectual quality patterns... I think RMP makes that point in LILA about the baby who doesn't respond to Dynamic Quality being mentally challenged. Matt: Okay, sure, but what do you make of Pirsig saying that capitalism better breeds DQ than communism? I'm not denying that without DQ there would be no biological patterns, but does Pirsig not suggest that social patterns allowed for more freedom/DQ? That intellectual patterns allowed _us_ to be more free than ants? It seems to me that pressing in this fashion, you're pressing against Pirsig. Not me. When I say "bio patterns enabled social" and you say they don't, there's a clear sense in which you are wrong if one understands what I mean by "enable": for ask why inorganic patterns did not leap straight to social. 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
