[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[Mary]

Hi Andre and everymind, ;)

> 
> Mary to virtually everybody (and mind):
> 
> I suppose, but I have the uneasy feeling we aren't talking about quite
> the
> same thing.
> 
> Andre:
> Mary, this is an interesting post you planted and touches on some
> things
> I have been wondering about lately. It is getting late here at the
> moment but still want to give you an initial reaction and share some
> ideas.
> I am beginning to think we are not talking about the same thing. As
> mentioned to Platt, we are talking 'past' eachother.
> 
> Mary:
> 
> Pirsig makes a distinction between Static and Dynamic Quality
> yet maintaining that both are still Quality.  Sort of like the
> difference
> you might make between a book on the shelf and one yet to be written.
> 
> Andre:
> This is where I got uneasy feelings. You are immediately pre-supposing
> that the 'end result' will be a book...yet to be written.
> 
[Mary replies]
I'm presupposing that when DQ is experienced it will be as SQ.

> Mary:
> One is defined and knowable and one is not.  How else would you refer
> to a book that's yet to be written but as a book, since if it ever is
> realized it will be as, well, a book?
> 
> Andre:
> This continued the uneasy feeling. You are pre-determining something
> that has yet to be determined. You have already applied the knife.
> 
[Mary replies]
Quality is Quality is Quality.  DQ could be likened to SQ that hasn't been
experienced yet.

> Mary:
> When he's discussing the analytical knife, this DQ/SQ split isn't what
> he's
> talking about.  We never see that split.  All we see is the static
> fallout,
> the SQ.
> 
> Andre:
> This is unfortunate Bodvar terminology (sorry Mary but I do not like
> it). It is misleading as it seems to completely miss the next point you
> are making:'He's trying to get us to take a grip on how we handle the
> experience, the SQ.
> 
> No! The experience IS DQ it is pre- intellectual, pre-language.
> 
> The 'experience of SQ is inorganic/organic/social and intellectual
> patterns of value. To be clear: No DQ.
>
[Mary replies]
Right.  All experience is SQ.
 
> Mary:
> And next comes the confusion: If there is a difference between DQ and
> SQ what do you think it is?
> And you continue:Well, what does that mean, especially when he says
> that all is Quality, all is Value,
> all is Morals?
> 
> Quality is the same whether you put an "S" in front of it or a "D".
> Whether you can define it
> or not.  Whether you experience it or not.  There is no split.
> 
> Andre:
> 
> This is why it caught my interest Mary and I think that there is a
> difference...and I really hope that dmb and Anthony can chime in here
> as well. (Anthony's PhD contains 2 chapters: one on Pirsig's idea about
> Quality and one on Pirsig's ideas about Value...I cannot access them at
> the moment but this alone seems to suggest a difference).
>
[Mary replies]
If Ant wrote chapters explaining the difference between Quality and Value
then I'm disappointed.  There is no difference between Value and Quality
other than the connotations those words may have for English speakers who
don't understand the MoQ.  I think the point is that Value and Quality and
Morals are expanded in meaning by Pirsig so that wherever you see one word
you can take the flavor of all the others, roll them all together and know
he's talking about a concept that's much bigger than the standard definition
of any one.  

Value is Morality.  Quality is Value. Quality is Valu(able) is Moral.  All
the subtle shades of meaning each term normally has is expanded by seeing
that they all represent the same thing.
  
> Here is my take: the 'split' you talk about further in your post, the
> 'stuff you take away' from DQ happens pre-intellectually, pre-language.
> This is adding to the pile of sand you have already scooped up from the
> endless beach.
> 
> The split occurs through (e)valuations (hence quality)of abstracting
> those 'bits' of experience that 'fit' our boxcars...that fit our own
> train which of course is mediated through pre-existing analogies of
> inorganic, organic, social and intellectual pattens of value.
> 
> Mary:
> You don't have any choice about the split between Dynamic and Static.
> 
> Andre:
> As Dan suggests, you cannot not have a choice about this. This is the
> heart of the confusion, and I will reiterate dmb's words again:
> Bodvar's interpretation leads you to such nonsense.It leads to to a no-
> win, no choice situation. Actually, come to think of it, it makes you
> quite dead! (What makes you get out of bed in the morning?)
> 
[Mary replies]
Not having a choice about DQ is not a negative thing.  I'm just saying you
have no control over it.  If you're lucky enough to get 'struck' by DQ, then
that's great, but you can't conjure it up on demand or pick and choose what
you're going to get.

> Mary:
> You can't make a lot of decisions about the unknown, can you?
> 
> Andre:
> "Now it comes! Because Quality is the GENERATOR of the mythos. That's
> it. That's what he meant when he said, 'Quality is the continuing
> stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of
> it. Every last bit of it.' ...Men invent RESPONSES to Quality, and
> among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are.
> You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try
> to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've go to work
> with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know.
> It's an analogue to what you already know. It HAS to be. It can't be
> anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is
> known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues.
> These fill the boxcars of the train of consciousness."  (ZAMM, page
> 351, near the end of chapter 28. Emphasis is Pirsig's) (thanks dmb!)
> 
[Mary replies]
Exactly!  DQ is the generator of SQ and from our initial perception of SQ
the responses follow.  You can choose a subject-object split response for
the SQ you experience or you can see it as patterns of value or maybe
something else entirely, but I don't know what a third alternative might be.
Yeah, Quality is the generator of the mythos, the ethos, the logos, and the
pathos.  It's the generator of everything.

> Mary:
> Why did he go to such lengths to incorporate DQ into his
> metaphysics if he couldn't even define it?  Makes him sound like a
> crackpot
> or a mystic, right?
> 
> Andre:
> Yes, this depends on what cultural perspective you use. The 'West'
> would use the former.
> 
> Mary:
> He did it because he had no choice. You can't have Static Quality
> without
> Dynamic Quality to bring it into existence.  To formulate his
> metaphysics he
> had to work backward, rejecting one assumption at a time.
> 
> Andre:
> He had no choice in the sense that he did not like himself at all...
> (as you put it in another post... steeped in SOM). He saw the sorry
> state the world is in and the sorry state that he was in and decided to
> do something about it.(because there was more to his (read the human!)
> experience of the world than SOM provided/recognised).
> 
[Mary replies]
Yeah, that's what I see too.

> Mary:
> Let's say you can stand in your kitchen, if you are so inclined, and
> spend a whole day carefully peeling one layer at a time off an onion
> until
> it isn't an onion anymore.  It isn't anything.  Your hand is empty.
> Without
> Dynamic Quality, that's what the MoQ would be like.  Without Dynamic
> Quality, where would Static Quality come from?
> 
> Andre:
> No-thing. Quality, The Tao,The Formless, Emptyness (within which there
> is great working)
> 
[Mary replies]
You seem to have a better understanding of how to describe DQ than I do.  I
try to stay away from describing or defining it myself.  The only thing I
can say anything about is that which I have experienced - SQ.  After
thinking about it logically for a while, I'm willing to take DQ on faith
because even though it is undefined and unknowable I can logically work out
how it must exist.  There would be no 'change', no SQ could get created
without it.

> Mary:
> ...I'm getting tired and that discussion will have to be for another
> day.
> 
> Andre:
> Same here Mary. I enjoyed responding to this post. Interested to hear
> your comments...and some of the other's I requested. This is very
> important.
> 
[Mary replies]
Enjoyed your post too.  Thanks for talking to me about this.

Best,
Mary