[MD] The Sophists as the Last Philosophical Mystics

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Marsha 

On 28 Dec. you said:

> Why are your arguments based on using the diagram from ZMM when 
> Pirsig presented the MOQ in Lila?

If not ZMM and its presentation of the birth of the Quality 
Metaphysics can be aligned with the later MOQ there is 
something terribly wrong with the whole thing.   

> And what of his recent clarification of DQ?
 
> "In the few diagrams I have made of the evolutionary structure of the
> MOQ, Dynamic Quality is not part of the diagram.  Dynamic Quality is
> represented by the paper the diagram is written on.  I like that
> device because there is no diagram in the world that can contain the
> paper it is written on." [Pirsig to Turner, Sept '05]

Well, what of this to Paul Turner (sep 2003):

    "Perhaps you can pass all this along to the Lila Squad 
    with the caveat that this is not a Papal Bull, as some 
    would have it, or just plain bull, as others will see it, but 
    merely another opinion on the subject that it is hoped will 
    help."  

I admire Pirsig for saying this. We are supposed to think for 
ourselves and not rely on "Papal Bulls" from above. 

About "diagrams". I don't know what kind Pirsig speaks about 
here, but what I said about the box type stands up for scrutiny. 
There is however another type and I have one made by Pirsig  
where the paper truly represents DQ. The static levels are 
depicted as concentric rings, inorganic the innermost and 
intellectual the outermost, but on this paper the SOM can't be 
drawn however big the sheet.

Back to the boxes again. To draw a box representing "DC", and 
then go on to say that the paper represents DQ may sound 
impressive, unassailable and immensely subtle, but is plain 
impossible. One consequence is that the SOM (drawn on paper) 
is really  a  "moq" (DQ divided into S/O) while it is a metaphysics 
where Quality belongs in the subjective compartment. 

Bo