[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

Ham, Krimel, Andre, All-

Sat June 5

Bodvar to Krimel, June 5:
> > > This leads to the false impression that there remains an
> > > unscathed Quality atop the DQ/SQ dichotomy,
> > > and made the latter-day Pirsig (in the Summary of 2005)
> > > say that the MOQ is the "static" part of a still greater
> > > Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics. This is horribly wrong
> > > IT IS QUALITY WHICH IS DIVIDED!

Andre replies:
> > The 'false impression' is entirely yours Bodvar.
> > Quality remains 'unscathed' because it cannot be scathed.
> > Static patterns of value are abstracted from the (Quality)
> > stimulus... . DQ, as used in LILA in this instance ...
> > as a static intellectual reference to Quality! All concepts
> > need to be kept out of Quality. ..
> > Quality CANNOT BE DIVIDED!

Ham:
> Here is another example of a fundamental concept being misconstrued.
> Ironically, the confusion is a direct result of Pirsig's levels
> metaphor. It should be obvious that Quality (Value) is ALWAYS DIVIDED
> because it is relative.  We couldn't measure or define quality if we
> didn't divide it or relate it to someting else.  And we couldn't even
> realize Value if WE (as the sensible agents) were not separated from
> it. In our frenzy to "overcome" duality and equivocate differences, we
> lose sight of the fact that we live in a differentiated universe. This
> individuated experience isn't just an accident.  Differentiation
> serves a cosmic purpose: it allows Value to be realized finitely and
> comparatively in relation to all otherness. 

I know your dualism Ham, but the fact that it is human beings who 
"give names to all the animals" and "names means language" 
excludes those two - the individual and language - from all 
metaphysics lest it ends in absurdities. For instance that concepts - 
language - is what separates static from dynamic. Thus all such be it 
"radical empiricism" or "man the measure" are swept off my desktop. 

That much said you are right that all metaphysics, world-views, 
mythologies ...etc.  ALWAYS ARE DIVIDED. As said wherever anthros 
went - to the deepest reaches of the Amazon or interior of New 
Guinea, all the people people they met had some "metaphysics" about 
the emergence and destiny of "mankind" (which always was 
themselves) and it was invariably some X that had split or had 
spawned something else. That they, themselves, were some mindish 
intellects apart from their world was the only thing that none of these 
mythologies contained ..... NATURALLY BECAUSE IT IS SOM!    

Ham:
> Krimel expressed this idea quite well on 6/2 when he said:

> > 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 particular state of insight.  ...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.

Right we divides, but it was with SOM that the divisions were  
subjective/objective.

> Consider the alternative.  If we and our objective world were not
> divided --  if everything were one "aggregated mass" -- where would we
> find order, beauty, love, excellence, morality, joy, challenge, or
> inspiration? Indeed, there would be no values, let alone an intellect
> to comprehend them. Am I wrong, or has the author of the MoQ missed
> something essential in his effort to reduce reality to a quality
> hierarchy? 

The alternative to no division isn't "one aggregated mass" rather not 
being alive (perhaps it amounts to the same;-) Human beings 
invariable divide, but - again - up to SOM the division never included a 
subject that peered out on an objective world, it was always a god-like 
realm apart from the human realm. And the MOQ was meant to be a 
new non-S/O division that bore some likeness with the original, with 
DQ the "god-like" reality and the DQ our reality, but Pirsig lost heart 
and slipped back in SOM with Quality now the "objective" reality of 
which MOQ's DQ/SQ is a subjective, abstraction.

Thanks for reading (guffaws)

Bodvar