[MD] DQ: to define or undefine

[david buchanan]

Krimel said: 

... What that means is that DQ is NOT undefinable. DQ is just the opposite of SQ. SQ is patterns that don't change and DQ is patterns that do change.


dmb says:

I think it's a mistake to distinguish DQ and sq as the difference between change and changelessness. First of all, there is no such thing as changelessness. Static patterns are relatively stable, but even stars are born and die and the big bang was a very big change. These are the inorganic level of patterns, the most stable of all, and still the whole story is a drama of unfolding and collapse. Secondly, DQ can't be rightly thought of as patterns that do change because DQ is not patterned at all. It's likened to a stream, a flux, to the cutting edge of an ongoing event, etc.. 

Krimel quoted Pirsig's reply to Paul Turner:

"When ZMM was written there was no division between Dynamic Quality and static quality and the term Quality then meant what is now meant by Dynamic Quality.  Today I tend to think of Quality as covering both Dynamic and static quality.  So far no problems have arisen with this confusion of terms but if they do arise I would guess that they could be eliminated by refraining from using the term Quality alone."

Krimel added:

Case found this utterly outrageous when it was first posted and I carry the torch of his undiminished outrage to this day. I have no wish to engage in a 10 year Bo-esque tirade but if I did, this would be the place to do it.   In a single swoop, almost as an afterthought, Pirsig removed Quality from the Metaphysics of Quality. 


dmb says:

No he didn't and there is nothing about the quote that should outrage anyone. I think it's all quite clear and even pretty obvious. You find it confusing only because you are confused about the meaning of "static" and "dynamic", as shown above. 


Krimel said:

Pirsig does more or less create the problem in Lila by failing to distinguish between Quality and Dynamic Quality. He uses them interchangeably and as a result often incorrectly. I don't think it is hard to read past these errors and to forgive him for his enthusiastic applications of the ideas represented but a literal reading without this filter produces weird effects.  ... Please, someone tell me why DQ can't be defined.


dmb says:

No, I think the problem is created by reading Lila badly. I mean, how can you read Lila and still wonder why DQ can't be defined? It's the exact same reason "Quality" can't be defined in ZAMM. That's one of the most important clues that tell us the "Quality" of ZAMM is equal to the DQ of Lila. In both cases, it can't be defined because it is pre-intellectual experience and definitions are intellectual. It is undifferentiated experience and definitions ARE differentiations. Definitions are static patterns and DQ is neither static nor patterned. I mean, he explains it about fifteen different ways. As I see it, all you've done here is blame Pirsig for your shortcomings as a reader and thinker. One of which, follows...


Krimel said:
... We can and do make statements about DQ all the time. While driving we look to measurements of velocity and guess at the distances between the other cars around us. We alter the position of the steering wheel to keep our distance from other drivers we speed up and slow down these are all DQ response to DQ change in the flow of traffic. There is no reason we can't define and even quantify those changes if it suits our purposes. ...



dmb says:

Drivers respond to DQ change in the flow of traffic? Hmmm. One could make such a case with lots and lots of qualifications. In the case of a highly intense auto race where the driver is an expert with many years of experience, SHE could rely on the unconscious evaluation processes in such a way that we could call it DQ. But normally, driving a car is more likely to be totally static and deliberate. The great funeral procession to work, for example, is a very good example of static behavior. The living dead are in motion every weekday morning, zombie-like, drone-like, off to their cubicles to make square deals with square people. This shows that motion and velocity doesn't really have anything to do with DQ. 

I guess you're trying to image the distinction in terms of physical realities. But the difference is between two kinds of experience, two ways of "knowing", two ways of taking in the "world". That's why I keep putting it in terms of conceptual and pre-conceptual or intellectual and pre-intellectual. DQ and sq are phases or elements within experience. We isolate them for the purpose of discussion but they are constantly interacting with each other and together constitute our experience. 

What Pirsig and James are saying is that we have ignored one of these elements and that this ignorance causes personal, cultural and philosophical problems. As McGilchrist would put it, the emissary (our conceptualizations) thinks he's in charge of the Master (DQ). As Pirsig would put it, the truth (intellectual static patterns) thinks it's in charge of the Good (DQ). McGilchrist even agrees with Pirsig that this shift took place around the 4th century B.C.. and he puts it in terms of the domination by the left hemisphere of the briain, the one Jill Bolte-Taylor lost during her stroke. 









 		 	   		  
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