[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[Ham Priday]

Bo, DMB, Krimel, and All --


A week ago I promised Bodvar I'd chime in "when my instincts tell me someone 
is talking nonsense."

Here's an example of what I mean:

[Krimel to Bo on 15 June]:
> .....the world as we know it is one analogy upon another, one
> ghost upon another and so whole thing is made up of such divisions.

[Bo]:
> Where does the MOQ say  that "the world as we know it" are
> analogies. It says that it is Value. If it was analogies a Metaphysics
> of Analogies (MOA) is required
>
> The great metaphysical revolution took place when everything
> became Quality. Thus the DQ/SQ division is not anything like the
> S/O split (mind you: the analytical knife always cuts S/O) but an
> internal arrangement - the static levels are value levels - not like
> the S and O that are worlds apart.

[DMB]:
> ... The MOQ makes that cut as the first move in a larger system
> but that system also says that such intellectual divisions are always
> secondary to the whole circle.

[Bo]:
> Not so glib young man! It's no intellectual division, but THE QUALITY
> ordering. And this ordering is not secondary to anything. Lest you have
> - like Pirsig - to postulate another "intellectual"  Quality/MOQ division
> that must be countered by a still higher   ..ad infinitum.  Come to your
> senses Dave.

The idea that something called Quality "orders up" the differentiated system 
that constitutes our reality is a fallacious concept that insults human 
intelligence.  If this were true, there would be no need for experience or 
the intellect that you prize so highly.  David is right that divisions are 
always secondary to the whole.  The primary division is not the universe as 
experienced but the separation of value-sensibility (awareness) from the 
"absolute whole" (Essence or DQ).  The order, dynamics, and attributes of 
existence are shaped by individual sensibility and defined (intellectually) 
by reflecting on one's experience.

Although "analogy" is not the term I would have chosen to describe physical 
reality, Krimel has a point in that finite objects and events represent our 
(valuistic) analog of the Absolute Source.  This is because we only sense 
its Value, and what we construct experientially is a differentiated (i.e. 
relational, dynamic) perspective of ultimate reality in terms of its value.

Pirsig's mistake with the "patterning" concept was to relegate all the human 
faculties--mind, experience, cognizance, intellect, and the emotions--to a 
universal Quality, thereby eliminating not only subjects and objects but 
proprietary awareness as well.  This essentially reduces the human being to 
a useless byproduct of evolution with no agency of its own, hence no 
discernable reason to exist.  However you parse the MoQ levels, the paradigm 
of Quality as a pre-structured system without epistemological foundation 
further compounds the author's error, in my opinion.

Sorry, but I couldn't let this comment stand unchallenged.

Essentially speaking,
Ham