[MD] Quality/Tao

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 10:44 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bo said to Dan and dmb:
> But for Goodness sake  The MOQ does say that there is a Dynamic Quality as dynamic as dynamic comes, so why postulate another still more dynamic one that the first variety is a "static" fall-out from.
>
> dmb says:
> I don't think anyone has postulated any third thing. There is just static and dynamic. There are concepts derived from the flux of life. That's it. DQ as a metaphysical concept and as it is actually lived and felt and experienced directly. I don't know where you're getting the third thing.

Dan:
Yes, Dave is exactly right so far as I can see. Bo, I think your SOL
hang-up has warped your sense of the MOQ to the point that it is no
longer the MOQ but your own pet metaphysics.

>
> Bo continued:
>
> Are there some serious drawbacks from saying that the MOQ describes the Quality Reality?  Or is it - what I strongly suspect - that you see the DQ/SQ partitioning taking place in the subjective mind of Man and is thus forced to postulate a Quality independent of Man's mind: an "objective" one? The MOQ is a break with SOM so why let it return under a thin "dynamic/static" guise?
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> The other day I learned that the word "mind" was originally only a verb. People would say, "mind the steps" or "I don't mind if you do". It was never used as a noun, as a label for a thing. But as the word "soul" was going out of fashion, around 400 years ago, English speaking people started using "mind" instead and it became a noun, a thing. Add this to the famous idea that Descartes invented the subjective mind as a substance, as a mental substance, as a thing, and you can see how SOM took shape. It's no accident that physics came into its own around the same time. William James famously reversed this. He said the mind is not a thing, not a substance. It is a function, an action, a verb. And it is not metaphysically distinct from the body or the world in which it functions.
>
> In other words, rejecting SOM does not mean we also reject any and every conception of "mind". We don't have to give up thinking or intellect or anything of the sort. It simply means that we reject the idea that subjects and objects are all of reality and that they can never quite correspond to each other.
>
> Likewise, Quality is not objective and it is not independent of us. It is our lived experience. In some sense we could even say it is intimately ours. It's what you know before you can think about it. Same with the concepts that follow in its wake. You are those intellectual patterns. Our reality is made of these patterns. Everything in the encyclopedia is made of these patterns. And one of the things in that encyclopedia is the idea of an objective reality, which is not a pattern we subscribe to, but it's in there along with many other ideas.
>
> The fact that the MOQ has an intellectual level and the fact that Pirsig's central mission is to expand our forms of rationality both tell us that the intellect is very, very important and still remains a key factor in the overall picture of reality despite that fact that the MOQ rejects SOM and the Cartesian mind as a "ridiculous fiction".
>
> One of the big problems with talking about your equation (intellectual level equals SOM) is that you have a weird definition of both terms. It seems you don't understand what SOM is and you don't understand what intellect is. As a result, the equation is hopelessly confused. I mean, it would be wrong even if you were using those terms properly but the added complications make it almost impossible to untangle.
>
> And because you've misconceived the key terms, my answer will probably make no sense to you. In fact, I'm absolutely certain this answer will make no difference at all.

Dan:

I'm sorry, Bo, but I've gone back and re-read what I wrote and I don't
see a thing about subjects and objects. Honestly, I don't subscribe to
your SOL idea and have no interest in discussing it. If you'd like to
have a real discussion about the MOQ, then drop your constant harping
on SOM and move on, dude. I mean, for Christ's sake, don't you ever
get tired of it?

As far as I'm concerned, Dave is right on.

Get over it,

Dan