Marsha, Krimel, "Throwing quotes"?? Let me ask this, if "morality" (here also read as "betterness", since that was Krimel's claimed only manifested as human value judgement), what truly new does the MOQ bring? Seems to me it does nothing new, as camps from idealism to humanism have claimed "man against an amoral world". This is, of course, the underlying premise to S/O metaphysics that Pirsig railed against. In other words, if "betterness" (as Pirsig suggests) is not the fundamental "Quality" of all levels, what is the draw here? If we dismiss that "Quality" is "betterness" and consider it "amoral", why even call it "Quality"? What is "revolutionary" about a philosophy that posits a "moral man" interacting with an "amoral world"?
As I said last time out, "betterness" is only problematic when it is applied to the MOQ's levels from a detached, external, human perspective. Often the levels are in conflict, as when an asteroid pummels the earth's "biosphere". In such a case, what is good for the inorganic patterns is often devastating for biological patterns. And while that asteroid lacks biological, social and intellectual "morality", it IS inorganic morality. I don't think this waters down the word at all. In fact, what it does is argue against the S/O dichotomy. It makes no sense to me to call something "Quality", and then claim it is "amoral" and has nothing to do with "betterness". Quality is by its very conception a recognition that "some things are better than others", that is they have "greater Quality". I dunno, this whole need to separate "man" out from the "world", this reification of the same-old S/O dualism baffles me. I mean, with Ham I get it, he is actively arguing _against_ the proposals of the MOQ, S/O dualism is fundamentally important to his philosophy. But this is something I would say is truly critical to any revolutionary understandings Pirsig gives us, and to be honest I'm not sure what the point of the MOQ would be without it. Or maybe its just me having a bad day... 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
