[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[Krimel]

[Bo]
Pirsig's claim is that Reality = Quality and that the MOQ is some 
arbitrary arrangement of this Quality Reality, hence his Quality/MOQ 
meta-metaphysics that undermines the MOQ. I claim that  the MOQ 
constitutes the Quality Reality, its Dynamic/Static split and static levels 
makes for the ultimate flawless metaphysics.  

[Krimel]
Reality ultimately defies description. This is not a some flaky mystical
quasi-philosophical gobbledy gook. It conforms to our everyday experience.
Reality is in flux and whatever we say it at a particular instant is neither
what it was in the previous instant not what it will be in the next. We
create conceptual patterns to help us navigate this flux and those patterns
are concepts. Any description one offers comes in the form of conceptual
patterns. Those patterns are not reality but descriptions of it. Bohr said
it very well when he claimed that physics is not about reality but about
what we can say about reality.

This is a critical point which you appear to have missed entirely. Until you
deal with it everything else you say is meaningless.

Marsha for example gets this point very well. Perhaps too well. Forming
concepts or dividing the indivisible is just what we do. To not do so is to
be paralyzed. One does not derive greater meaning from abandoning
conception. One merely achieves a conception of no conception or a state
particular state of insight. This is not the sort of state that serves one
well in rush hour traffic. To act in the world requires a set of concepts.
What we argue about is always the Value of one set of concepts as opposed to
another.
   
[Bo]
No objections whatsoever, the Tao may well correspond to Quality, I'm 
no fundamentalist here, my point however is that all such "Reality = X" 
immediately requires a counterpart, so why not start with the dualism 
right away? One dynamic, active ...etc. source that causes static, 
passive ...etc. fall-outs. And now Krimel I ask you to concentrate on 
this single issue: 

[Krimel]
All you are saying when you say "Reality = X" is that Reality is undefined.
That's what "X" means in algebra. We can then substitute various Values for
"X" and see if they satisfy the equation. It may well be that Reality is
ultimately dualistic; the Zoroastrians certainly thought so and introduced
dualism into Judiasm by the time of the 1st century. But a great many
thinkers like Moses, Pirsig, Lao Tsu and Einstein have resisted such a
notion, largely for esthetic reasons.
 
[Bo]
If Tao is the source then IT must be the Yang Tao that spawns Yin 
Tao, there is not a super-TAO that accidentally spawns Yang &  Yin, 
but just as well could have spawned X & Y . This is so crucial for the 
pesky Quality/MOQ issue that I stop here. What do you say?

[Krimel]
In Taoism the Tao is "The Way", that is, the path of life, the road we
travel from birth to death. Yang does not spawn Yin or vise versa. They are
concepts derived from our experience of the path. Yin and Yang do not have
specific meanings. They are ways of seeing and characterizing the binary
divisions that appear so natural to us. Again Lao Tsu does not use these
terms. They are the addition of later Taoists. Taoist metaphysics results
from centuries of Chinese sages directly experimenting with and trying to
understand randomness. The I-Ching is the culmination of these efforts.
Taoist metaphysics were appropriated by Buddhists as the philosophical
underpinning of Zen. It is this Zen corruption that hinders Pirsig's grasp
of DQ and SQ. This misconception is then amplified by McWatt, dmb and the
whole AWGI cult. 

It is this Zen corruption of Taoist metaphysics that prevents the embrace of
modern complexity theory. This more modern version holds that order or SQ is
a subset of randomness or DQ. For example, during an infinite number of coin
tosses, it is possible to throw a trillion heads in a row. If one were
flipping the coins during this run of a trillion heads, it would appear that
the world was an orderly place where heads was the only possible outcome. At
yet for every toss the probability of throwing heads remains one half. 

I would argue that the a dualism of SQ and DQ is only a matter of appearance
and conception and that the underlying Tao remains undefined.