Re: MD Migration towards Dynamic Quality

[Elizaphanian]

Hello people, I've been lurking for a couple of weeks and (mostly for reasons of work pressure) haven't contributed anything before. But I'm about to go away for a week's holiday, I have to catch a taxi to the airport in three and a half hours (which will be 03:00 hours in the morning, UK time - bummer) and suddenly - I have a bit of time to write something. This is mainly a response to Matt the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat's last post.   Is Dynamic Quality inherently better than static quality? Or is the Oakeshott option valid/coherent etc? Well the first thing that occurs to me is that something analogous is discussed when Phaedrus is setting up his innovative teaching methods in ZAMM, and forces everyone to agree that they know what Quality is, even if they can't define it. And that holding back from defining is carried through into the MoQ, where the indefinable element *is* the dynamic. So, first point - can we get a full definition of static quality? I think, probably, yes, which means that - at least in MoQ terms - the Oakeshott option is flawed.   But let's go further. The 'bombshell': Perhaps, and this does go against Pirsig's direct word, we should recognise that DQ never gets any closer, and conclude that therefore no levels are superior to other levels (is it BAD that a plague should wipe out a society? is it BAD that a society should wipe out a plague?) To say that 'no levels are superior to other levels' is to remove value judgements from the system, which collapses the MoQ completely. It seems to me that if you accept some sort of value judgement, then the MoQ is the most creative way of understanding how things fit together. But it doesn't rule out an objection which rejects the possibility of value judgements at all, and that seems to be what is underlying Matt's concerns. (From this point we get to talking about whether and how it is 'obvious' or not.) But you won't be able to get an intellectual justification or explanation for this - in MoQ terms that would be an intellectual pattern trying to explain a dynamic pattern (ie define the indefinable). Much more could be said on this point, but most of it is covered by RMP himself, I think.   However, I think there is something misleading here from Simon's original post (and possibly before) which is the language about DQ getting 'closer'. I would argue that DQ is always just out of our reach, luring us forward - a bit like the carrot held in front of the donkey's nose getting it to walk forward. At the moment that innovations are taking place then DQ is being expressed; hopefully it gets 'latched' on to a static level and the 'progress' is preserved. But I'm not sure that the long progression of such events means that we are getting 'closer' to DQ - DQ is there all the time, and the higher quality levels that emerge over time do so on the backs of all the earlier DQ events. DQ is not to be identified with any particular evolutionary utopia to which the world is being directed - at least, not the way I understand it. The mental image that I tend to have comes from welding (I can't remember if this derives from ZAMM or not, it probably does, most of my good images do). When two pieces of metal are being welded together there is one white hot space where the situation is extremely fluid, but as soon as the torch passes on then the situation cools down (static latching) and things are fixed. I would say that life is following the white hot place, but most of us are still stuck in the static. DQ isn't a fixed place - of course! I understand it more as a process. Which throws up loads of questions about time and space, but that will take us in quite a different direction.   Lastly, I think it would be polite to give a brief autobiographical note: I'm 30, a priest based in London with postgrad qualifications in Philosophy; read ZAMM when I was 18 and it has shaped the way I think about the world ever since. Not completely determinatively, though - I was an atheist then :)   I look forward to following the discussion further (even if I hardly ever get a chance to submit something considered) when I get back from my holiday in a week's time.   Cheers! Sam