Squad, The suggested program topics for July are below. To vote simply reply to this email stating the number that you vote for at the top. You have from now until midnight June 30 to cast your votes. 1. How can/do you take these two books, which hopefully have brought about the realization that Quality is the building block of the Universe, and apply it to your own life to increase your own and others perception and creation of quality? (xskinheadx) 2. In salute of the completion of the human genetic map, our full DNA code. My topic suggestion is: What "Exacatly Happens" (or happened) in between the Inorganic level and the Biological level? or Let's make some soup! :) (Todd) 3. "Ethical systems within the framework of MOQ, with the emphasis on Quality, may produce a system which is not only coherent and workable but is appealing enough for people to want to accept." (Horse to Lila Squad, March 1998) Do you agree with this statement? Why?/Why not?How would you sell such a vision to the MOQ skeptic? (Mark B) 4. What is will?" where does it come from? does WILL exist in every level of the MOQ? is there a social will? a biological? an inorganic will.... How does WILL work? What is will POWER? What is it's relation to the MOQ? (Miv) 5. The role of the narrator in ZAMM. (Simon) 6. In LILA (chapter 12) Pirsig writes: "If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics- Inorganic, Biological, Social, and Intellectual- nothing is left out. No "thing," that is. Only Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any encyclopedia, is absent." However, without the "encyclopedia" Pirsig speculates over in the above quote, assigning specific patterns to one of the various levels is often nothing more than a guessing game. In some cases, two levels may appear to lay claim to the same pattern. And often a given moral situation seems to allow for various interpretations of how the levels may be applied. This problem often creates a "post-hoc MoQ" in which the levels are applied only to justify some preordained conclusion. If one grants to the MoQ everything it claims for itself it should function as both a metaphysical description of reality and framework for deducing the "solutions" to problems of value and morality. LILA gives us plenty of information on how the levels (and DQ) should interact with each other but its descriptions of the contents of each respective level are at best vague. Most importantly, the MoQ doesn't even claim to give a method of "deducing" what patterns fit where. But, without this ability the MoQ can never fulfill either of its two primary functions.. After all, the MoQ can have no value in moral or metaphysical thought if the thinker must always check with Robert M. Pirsig to know if he's correctly applying the levels.. I propose that this month we scan LILA for clues and share our ideas on whether assigning patterns to levels is an 'art' or a 'science'. and if there's no such 'science', does this leave the MoQ open to charges of being nothing but an elaborately veiled emotivism? (Rick) MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
