[MD] The MOQ for dummies.

[Case]

[Bo]
But I could not leave it and the right hand subsection (objective)
eventually dissolved and I was left with the insight that "All is Language"
or (for your benefit) "language is experience itself". This pulled the rug
under objectivity (for me) ... under subjectivity too, under the very
subject/object distinction. 

[Case]
I am not sure if you mean this to be as extreme as it sounds. While I would
not for second underestimate the importance of language, I do not think
"language is experience itself". Language is how we communicate about
experience but I do not find that language plays that great a role even in
my memory. I remember feelings, vague impressions of the past not narratives
about what I did yesterday. If asked I will supply a verbal response but
that is not how I recall things internally. Furthermore Pirsig's notion of
Quality being prelinguist or prerational does not strike me as a big deal
either. Much of what we experience is nonverbal and not rationalized to any
great extent.

In fact rationalization and verbalization are frequently just word salad
tossed out to give voice to feelings and impressions we have no real
understanding about. An example I have cited before comes from split brained
patients studied by Sperry and Gazzaniga. Patients where able to perform
tasks based on information received only through the non-verbal half of
their brains. When asked to explain why they had acted in the manner they
did they spun elaborate but nonsensical tales to account for what they had
done.

Human reason abhors a vacuum and rather than settle for a simple I don't
know, we will tell the most outlandish whoppers and believe them whole
heartedly.

[Bo]
You say that the levels is the messy part of the MOQ. I believe this looks
so (to you) because you haven't grasped the initial transition from the
subject/object dualism to the dynamic/static one. What I have concluded is
that insisting on a Quality outside of the dynamic/static split is what
hinders this understanding. Comparing my language epiphany with Pirsig's
Quality one  and hearing Heather Perella [or SA] insisting on her
"Analogies" (which is language in a different guise) and reading (in ZMM)
about Henri Poincarè's "Harmony" and Pirsig's feeling of identity with his
Quality, it's clear that there are many canditates for the "ALL IS ..."
role, but what's common is the DynamicIStatic split and that is the real
MOQ. 

[Case]
As I have mentioned I do not regard the levels as particularly significant.
I think you can make up whatever levels you want anytime you want. From Kant
to Freud to Wilbur writers love their levels. I see them as occasionally
convenient fictions and in many cases totally inconvenient fictions. The
lack of clear distinction between the social and intellectual levels is a
case in point.

I think Pirsig made a major advance by splitting the world into the dynamic
and static. This seems to me to follow Taoist metaphysics and is very much
in keeping with cutting edge thinking in math and physics. Pirsig's
contribution is largely squandered however with the insistence that dynamic
means some kind of touchy feely undefined whatever.

[Bo]
It's better to discuss such things with a skeptic than those who regard all
efforts to weed out the inconsistencies as "hurting" Pirsig.  

[Case]
I recently reread Lila again and you know I am always taken by what a great
writer he is. Both of his novels are stunningly well written. Those books
stand on their own. Many of my criticism have been not so much what he says
as the fact that sometimes the way he says what he says allows for some
rather bizarre interpretations. In fairness I would include my own
interpretations in this category. Rather than being hurt I rather envision
Pirsig as finding all hashing and rehashing of his work amusing. But as
Platt says, "I could be wrong."

[Bo]
It bears some resemblance with Quantum Physics. When it was young the
physicists believed that it was some "hidden parameter" that caused its
weirdness and when discovered it would re-unite it with reason (nobody knew
- or knows - any SOM) Einstein was the last rationalist and formulated his
famous thought experiment that would decide once and for all that "God
didn't play dice". This experiment became possible in the eighties (by Alan
Aspect) but the outcome proved that Quantum reality is the only reality,
there is no objective world "out there". And by now physicists have dropped
all pretentions of understanding, they just use the Quantum-based equations,
they always yield the correct results. That's what the MOQ also does:
whatever it is the directed at all SOM paradoxex (platypus) dissolves
....by the SOL interpretation that is, the way orthodox MOQ solves (for
instance) the mind/matter enigma is lame.   

[Case]
Quantum physics is one of those fields that leave non-physicist scratching
their heads and scrambling for rationalizations as I alluded to above.
Complexity Theory is every bit as weird but at least it is about things we
experience in our everyday lives. Uncertainty is a fundamental fact of life.
It has been celebrated in story and song throughout history. The advent of
the computer has allowed us to explore randomness and dynamic systems in
ways that could only be imagined even 50 years ago. These are areas where
the MoQ has much to offer.