[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[david buchanan]

Arlo quoted Pirsig:
The argument that the MOQ is not an intellectual formulation but some kind of other level is not clear to me. There is nothing in the MOQ that I know of that leads to this conclusion.



dmb says:

Let me rephrase that just so you know how I'm reading it. Pirsig is saying that he sees no reason to conclude that the MOQ is anything other than an intellectual formulation. Or, even more simply, he's saying the MOQ is an intellectual formulation.

Is this not proof that Pirsig has forwarded an non-SOM intellectual formulation? Is this not proof that SOM and intellect are not identical? Yes, of course it is.


"No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason. He showed a way by which reason may be EXPANDED to include elements that have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational. I think it's the overwhelming presence of these irrational elements crying for assimilation that creates the present bad quality, the chaotic, disconnected spirit of the twentieth century." (ZAMM, near the end of chapter 21. Emphasis is Pirsig's.)


That's why Bo's equation undermines the MOQ. The whole point is to improve reason, to formulate intellect without those attitudes of objectivity, without reductionistic materialism, without value-free science. The whole point is to offer a picture of intellect that is not based on SOM. Bo's equation defines the intellect as the very thing the MOQ is trying to overcome. This is just a very bad idea, a profound misunderstanding. It has no merit. Period.



 		 	   		  
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