David H said to Andre:
Is a 'referring term' not a definition? I think to some degree that it is.
...But how can you even talk of DQ without referring to it? You can't do it.
From the perspective of sq, even the words Dynamic Quality are a sort of
definition. The term is a static and defined thing. And this, being static, is
of course, not DQ. Remember the Laws of Gravity in ZMM? Similarly, Dynamic
Quality didn't exist until Pirsig defined it by giving it a name.
dmb says:
David Granger (so many Daves, so little time) says that DQ is not a concept but
the center point around which a lot of conceptual furniture is arranged. The
MOQ is that arrangement of concepts. It's an intellectual structure built
around DQ and in relation to DQ.
I think the laws of gravity cannot rightly be compared to DQ. The former is
very precisely defined and it's so static that common sense takes it as an
eternal feature of the universe. Also, I think it's important to remember that
Pirsig isn't claiming to say anything new about DQ. He finds that Taoism
already expresses it quite beautifully, the Zen Buddhists already get it and he
even says that these ideas are nothing new and in fact it is the oldest idea
known to man. He says he didn't do a damn thing for Quality. DQ is just fine
without help from Pirsig but what he's offering is a expansion of rationality.
That's the MOQ. Value-free science has got to go. The pretense of objectivity
has got to go. The terrible secret loneliness, the relativism, the nihilism,
the spiritual emptiness and aesthetic hollowness are all symptoms of this
objective attitude. Pirsig says they all have to get out of town by noon. He
wants to put DQ at the center of our thinking. He want to show us ho
w intellect itself can be improved if we add undefined Quality and otherwise
knock the squareness out of it. He wants to show us that thought itself is (or
should be) a form of art. Excellence in thought and speech not just good for
its own sake but it should serve undefined betterness too.
To the extent that one ignores these static intellectual arrangements, or even
de-emphasizes them in favor of the ineffable, I think one (Marsha) has missed
the main point of the MOQ. I mean, intellectual quality is the whole game here.
By virtue of it's central undefined term the MOQ shares a view common among
philosophical mystics (both East and West), but the MOQ aims to expand
rationality at its roots. It's all about the improvement of static intellectual
quality. Those who pretend that static intellectual quality is the enemy, I
think, have it all wrong. It's hard to understand why anyone with that attitude
would join a discussion group in the first place.
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