Hi dmb, Yes, I fully agree with what you present, although I would not put Marsha in such a negative light as you do with your descriptions of her quality. She represents a common misconception of truth with MOQ. I believe she recognizes this and is therefore unwilling to discuss it. I have no reason to change her mind on what she feels is an important way to look at reality. That it is inconsistent with MOQ, is a value assignment that we can each place on her posts.
Marsha is reaching out for connectivity. She enjoys the angst that she causes many, and finds meaning in being the Devil's advocate. She provides a useful foil that enables each of us to present ideas within MOQ_discuss. I am not sure how useful it is to claim that Marsha's understanding is not as developed as yours. Marsha's credibility comes from what she writes. If there is little credibility there, in your opinion, this can be done through respectful disagreement. Character assassination through personal terms such as "confused" has no place in a setting which worships Arete. I am not sure that Marsha is confused. I don't think her purpose is to agree with everyone on a common synthesis of MOQ. The confusion may be yours in terms of what her intention is when she posts in this forum. I think Marsha knows exactly what she is doing. Just one comment on your post: dmb: "To say that truth is within a larger entity called Quality is to say that truth is subordinate to Quality. In the MOQ, all of our concepts, truths, and definitions have a relationship to this larger "entity" called Quality, to the primary empirical reality, but it is a subordinate relationship. Mark: I believe what we have in MOQ is a different manner of looking at existence. The concept of Truth when approached through MOQ, has a different definition from how it is used through standard Western thought. That we claim that it is subordinate to Quality means that we are providing Truth with a new definition. When the Western view place Quality beneath Truth, they are defining Quality in a different way from us, as well. Therefore, I believe it is misguided to Claim that Truth (as it is commonly known) is subordinate to Quality (as we know it). I can provide the following analogy. One can view a building in two ways (for example); these could be structure and function. Both are paradigms for considering such building. The Structuralists would say that function is subservient to structure. The Functionalists would say that the structure is subservient to function. So, who is right? Well, neither are right because they are redefining the meanings for structure and function by placing them as first respectively. We could also say that both of these groups are right, since by their manner of seeing things they are. In summary, by placing Quality above Truth, we are redefining truth within the paradigm of Quality. It is difficult to compare two paradigms except through how useful they are. The utility of MOQ is yet to be shown. We are living in an age of Truth, which is not all that bad. This age of Truth is reaching a tipping point, however, and we need a fallback position. Mark -end- On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 9:08 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: Marsha said: The term 'truth' has a long history and a deep association with the search for certainty.. Clinging to the term 'truth' with its deeply embedded existing denotations and connotations doesn't move toward a new quality orientation. Using 'patterns' clearly cuts the ties to the old understanding. It's fresh, it's new, it's a better representation. David Harding replied: So this is your explanation as to why 'truth' has issues. It has 'deeply embedded existing denotations and connotations' and has a history with the search for certainty. ....Everyone knows what truth is. It is just that our intellectual understanding of the best place for it within metaphysics for the last 2500 years has been wrong. If, using the MOQ, we get a better understanding of truth, then that is valuable, not just for truth into the future, but for everything ever written about truth. We can take those truths from the past which are valuable and discard those which are not. ... dmb says: Marsha rejects the term "truth" because she prefers "patterns". This is absurd for one simple reason; THE MOQ DEFINES TRUTH AS PATTERNS. In effect, her stance rejects the MOQ's truth because she prefers the MOQ's truth. Clearly, the woman is confused. To put it in a nutshell, Marsha's incoherent stance on truth is a result of confusing the problem with Pirsig's solution to that problem. He ditches Platonic Truth and Objective Truth and replaces it with a pragmatic truth but Marsha ham-handedly ditches the replacement too. She treats the solution as if it were identical to the problem and so refuses to use the word "truth" and declares no interest in the concept even when talking about it here, in the context of the MOQ. Apparently, Marsha cannot discern the difference between the MOQ's theory of truth and Plato's fixed and eternal Truth or the Objective Truth of SOM. And so she simply rejects the word truth altogether, rejects the notion of truth altogether. Please notice how Marsha's stance is quite nonsensical even on the most basic level. Her mistakes are so fundamental that they in the same neighborhood as grammatical errors and the misuse of terms. She keeps saying that she prefers the term "patterns" over the term "truth". But - as I keep saying - the MOQ defines "truth" as "patterns". "That was exactly what is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality." The MOQ's pragmatic truth is defined as static intellectual patterns, but Marsha prefers static patterns instead of truth? The are good reasons to reject the old conceptions of truth and adopt the pragmatic theory of truth instead. But Marsha is confused in such a way that she mistakenly uses those good reasons to reject the MOQ's improved conception of truth. She uses Pirsig's attack against Pirsig. She uses the MOQ to undermine the MOQ. It's hackery of the worst kind wherein the repairs cannot be discerned from the damage. It's worse than useless. It creates a mess, confuses and conflates the core concepts and, to the extent that other people are confused or misled, Marsha's contributions are destructive. The problem, Pirsig says, is that "Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other" back in the days of Plato. Plato had made Quality subordinate to reason, to truth. The MOQ's solution is to reverse that priority. "Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality." That's how Pirsig puts it in ZAMM but then you see this same solution in Lila. The MOQ's pragmatic truth maintains that reversed priority so that truth is within Quality and subordinate to Quality. "That was exactly what is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality." To say that truth is within a larger entity called Quality is to say that truth is subordinate to Quality. In the MOQ, all of our concepts, truths, and definitions have a relationship to this larger "entity" called Quality, to the primary empirical reality, but it is a subordinate relationship. 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
