Hi Ron, In my understanding, "not this, not that" is a phrase to suggest to the listener to stop thinking in terms of static quality. That is all. It does not actually define anything except maybe an attitude. As soon as one says "it IS 'not this, not that'", the whole phrase becomes meaningless. It is ALSO NOT "not this, not that". Which means it is "everything and nothing". Or, we could say that Quality is the knowable AND the unknowable (and of course the unfathomable). As soon as we put NOT into the equation, we diminish Quality into a subcategory below Truth. Then we are right back to where we started before Pirsig came around.
By subjecting Quality to modal logic, it buries it into the archives of philosophy as another "cute idea". This is why Pirsig said it was indefinable. He then goes on to write a book defining it, but that was a book of rhetoric, not of truths. Quality does not HAVE to exist in four levels. Quality does not HAVE to be divided into DQ and sq. However, the way metaphysics works, creating these things may provide us with satisfactory answers to a variety of other questions. This is no different from creating all these artificial concepts such as speed and mass as they do in physics. We create a framework, and then see how useful it is. The Quality is in the pudding. Cheers, Mark Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 5:32 AM, X Acto <[email protected]> wrote: > > To all, > > Hagan: > > "Consciousness is nothing more than the splitting of Reality into this and > that. " > > Marsha: > Not this, not that... > > Ron: > This concludes then that "UN-consciouness" is what all life is striving > towards if > "Not this, not that" accurately describes the nature of DQ in the most > general terms. > > Which seems to conflict with the idea that intellectual quality is the most > moral form > of Quality. > > Also it seems to conflict with the idea that DQ is "everchanging" for change > is making > the conscious splitting from past to present into "this and that". > > Therefore I have my doubts as to the effective use of the term "not this, not > that" as the best > general understanding of DQ. > > > ... > 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 > 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
