[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[MarshaV]

All and no-mind,

Seems to me DQ and sq are not separate and independent, but 
mutually interdependent.  But may I have misinterpreted...   

Quality(unpatterned experience/patterned experience)


Marsha  




On Jun 19, 2010, at 8:34 PM, Mary wrote:

> 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
> 
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