> djh said to dmb: > ... I agree that a philosophy forum is intellectual and the first thing > anyone should recognise when they join a philosophy forum is recognise that > what they're doing is ultimately degenerate by destroying the ultimately > undefinable reality with fixed metaphysical meanings. > > > dmb replied to dmb: > Oh, okay. That probably explains why your assertions are not making any > sense. I think this is quite wrong and it is exactly where Marsha goes wrong. > This is the bogus move that leads to the anti-intellectualism. As you've just > construed, any philosophical discussion is degenerate and it always wrong to > have any kind of intellectual conversation. This is the mistake I'm trying to > correct... It's not just degenerate to try to define the undefinable reality, > in this distorted view, it's also immoral to define philosophical terms. This > is why I keep harping on the distinction between concepts and reality. This > is the difference between Pirsig's metaphysics and the undefinable Quality > that it talks about. DQ is not definable but I'm not talking about DQ. I'm > talking about Pirsig's metaphysics. None of these complaint were EVER about > defining the undefinable… > > "The Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be separated from the > Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the rest of the printed philosophic > tradition it doesn't change from day to day, although the world it talks > about does." > > See? DQ is ever-changing, the undefinable reality is ever-changing. The MOQ > is not DQ. The MOQ is not reality. The MOQ and the terms it employes are not > supposed to be undefinable. Confusing the two is the mistake I hate so > passionately. I find it quite disturbing that most MOQers seem oblivious to > the outrageous wrongness of this blunder. > > "Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there > is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A > metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any > metaphysics." > > Again, Pirsig project is to expand and improve the intellect. This > anti-intellectualism is a profoundly bad and bogus misreading of the MOQ, one > that deserves contempt.
djh responds: Sorry dmb, it seems you're misunderstanding me. I don't think that 'it is always wrong to have any kind of intellectual conversation'. Clearly I'm having an intellectual discussion with you now and so I wonder already if you're still not looking at what I value and instead trying to score dialectical points. But regardless of that I'll assume that you're trying to understand my point and explain this particular comment to you. I do think it's important to recognise that before you commence a philosophical discussion that you recognise that it is degenerate in its own way as Pirsig does at the start of Lila.. "Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity." But as this quote also makes clear going out of your way to not have an intellectual conversation is a degeneracy of another sort.. "But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life." So as this quote hints at - DQ is not only undefinable (as you indeed claim) but that it is *also* infinitely definable: "Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can be described is a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the definitions emerge, they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts it." So I made the original comment because it is important to remember that sq is unavoidable and yet destroys DQ no matter what you want to try. Something some folks (such as Marsha with her attempts at categorising static quality as 'change') fail to recognise. So really none of what you wrote here addresses my overall point.. Could I be right about the other stuff I wrote in light of this? Feel free to go back and look over the previous post if you like.. Or not :-) 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
