> Ron commented on this dispute:
> ... One then has to ask Marsha and Dave H. if they side with the christians
> in this matter in which we are all born with the original sin of knowing
> good. At least that is what they seem to be saying when they use that quote
> out of context as support to the explanation of the immorality of
> intellectual quality. They use it in such a way as to seek to undercut
> quality because quality that is unintelligible is quality that does not
> exist... In an attempt to be more moral than intellectual quality they assert
> the superiority of the value-less. The consequence is it renders the good as
> an illusion, Quality is hypothetical and lacks any inherent reality. This
> appears to run contrary to Pirsigs explanations in most every way. So I
> suspect it is more of a rhetorical move {a very poor one} aimed at besting
> someone in an argument by hoping they will simply address the quote out of
> context instead of actually looking at what they are saying in a critical
> manner and evaluate the consequences of the position they are taking. It is a
> device employed by someone who obviously thinks their opponent is not very
> bright and not very well read on the subject matter because it is an
> obviously dishonest and desperate tactic to employ just to win an argument.
>
>
>
> dmb says:
> Yea, that's pretty much what I mean by calling it "self-serving,
> anti-intellectual bullshit".
>
> But what really kills me is the oblivious evasion of every argument. David H
> did not even address the objection but simply repeated the same mistake more
> emphatically. I said it was asinine and explained why it makes to sense and
> yet it was as if I said nothing at all. And it's such a stupid, simple
> mistake. Defining conventional and philosophical concepts is not the same as
> trying to define the ineffable, mystical reality. This misconstrues thought
> itself as a sin. Man, that is just really shooting yourself in the foot. If
> one's aim is intellectual paralysis, this is the way to go. Plus, if one
> really believed that discussing philosophy were a sin then one's
> participation here would make you either a hypocrite, a liar or an idiot.
djh responds:
Or dmb - I'm not aiming for purity and avoiding sin because I understand that
even by simply existing I am destroying the ultimately undefined nature of
reality..
"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."
Marsha seems to think that she can avoid this sin by calling static patterns
'ever-changing'. You seem to think that you can avoid this sin by pretending
that philosophical concepts are somehow not a destruction of the mystic
reality. Both of you are aiming for a purity which isn't possible…
"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."
No wonder you're at each other all the time..
Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics are a part of
life… Doing them doesn't make one a "hypocrite, a liar or an idiot" - they're
an unavoidable part of life.. So (says the book Lila) let's get these
definitions as good as we can..
"Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That
was the homer, over the fence, that ended the ball game. Good as a noun rather
than an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. Of course, the
ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or anything else definable, but
if you had to reduce the whole Metaphysics of Quality to a single sentence,
that would be it."
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
