[MD] SOLAQI, Kant's TITs, chaos, and the S/I distinction

[MarshaV]

At 08:02 PM 12/21/2006, Laird Bedore wrote:

>On DQ / Chaos:
>
>The sensation I've got from Pirsig's writing is that he does not like
>equating DQ with chaos... but ultimately the two terms point at the same
>thing - absolute undefined potentiality. To me it seems a choice of the
>"glasses" we use to filter the view - it's called DQ when wearing our
>"MOQ/Good is a noun" glasses and called chaos when wearing our
>"SOM/value-free" glasses. I've been looking for a show-stopping
>distinction between the two but so far nothing has stuck for me. With
>both, static stuff emerges from dynamic stuff. Quality is not always
>"good" - it's a spectrum from the highest of high quality to the lowest
>of low quality. In Pirsig's English class, there were high-quality
>papers and low-quality papers, but both emerged from "nothing/nowhere"
>and landed on a sheet of paper. So where's the beef? I think the word
>"chaos" has a crappy connotation but I don't see any serious difference.
>
>Further into the thought experiment - DQ and chaos are both exhaustive
>potentialities. Let's assume based on Pirsig's connotations (inorganic
>triumphs over chaos/etc, intellectual stretches toward DQ/etc) that
>chaos is an infinite amount of black dots on an endless plane and DQ is
>an infinite amount of white dots. As I've repeated in too many ways to
>make for decent essay-writing, both are exhaustive, infinite, so each
>must be everywhere on the plain at the same time. The plane looks like a
>massive sea of grey on and on to infinity... So why distinguish between
>chaos and DQ? They could just as easily be the same and be grey with the
>potentiality of being black, white, or any shade inbetween. When a
>distinction is created, it seems like semantics in order to avoid the
>whole potentiality factor, which is at the heart of both chaos and DQ.

Laird,

I found this explanation very satisfying, especially the phrases 
"absolute undefined potentiality" and "static stuff emerges from 
dynamic stuff".  I think that is all you can state.  Dynamic Quality 
(DQ) is a clearer term.  Chaos has a connotation that is too negative.

To think that either the 'emerging' or 'stuff' is somehow dependent 
on 'balance',  'coherence' or 'sweet spot'  is a mistake.  There may 
at times be a correlation, but not necessarily.  Comfort may be 
increased by this assumption, but that is besides the point.

Marsha