[MD] the MOQ and its environment

[Kevin Perez]

Hello Bo,
 
You make two interesting and significant statements; "Quality is the DQ of the
MOQ" and "the misunderstanding of a QUALITY outside the DQ/SQ persists."
 
I see in your statements, especially the second, a confirmation that no
consensus exists among MOQ advocates on a precise delineation of the MOQ.
 
A search of "quality is" in Pirsig's first book identified most of the following.  I'll
take these to be a very good delineation of what Quality is.
 
     Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is
     recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are
     a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.
 
     Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.
 
     Quality is just the focal point around which a lot of intellectual
     furniture is getting rearranged.
 
     Quality is not objective
 
     Quality is not subjective
 
     Quality is neither a part of mind, nor is it a part of matter. It is
     a third entity which is independent of the two.
 
     Quality is opposed to subjectivity.
 
     Quality is not a thing. It is an event.
 
     Quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and
     objects is made possible.
 
     Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject
     and object. The very existence of subject and object
     themselves is deduced from the Quality event.
 
     Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects.
 
     Quality is shapeless, formless, indescribable.
 
     People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different,
     but because people are different in terms of experience.
 
     Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both
     false and true precisely because it is a philosophic
     explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an
     analytic process, a process of breaking something down into
     subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else
     means) by the word quality cannot be broken down into
     subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so
     mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and
     direct.
 
     Quality is the response of an organism to its environment
 
     that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality
 
     Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts
     upon us to create the world in which we live.
 
     The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality.
 
     Quality [romantic Quality] and its manifestations [classic
     Quality] are in their nature the same.
 
     Romantic quality and classic quality together may be called
     the "mystic."
 
     Quality is all-pervading.
 
     [Phædrus'] metaphysical mountain climbing did absolutely
     nothing to further either our understanding of what Quality is
     or of what the Tao is.
 
     any description of Quality is a kind of definition and must
     therefore fall short of its mark
 
     Quality is the Buddha
 
     Quality is scientific reality.
 
     Quality is the goal of Art.
 
     Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects
     like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the
     source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the
     tree must start.
 
     Quality isn't a substance. Neither is it a method.
 
     Quality is what you see out of the corner of your eye
 
     Quality is the generator of the mythos
 
     Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create
     the world in which we live
 
     Quality is the track that directs the train.
 
     A person who knows how to fix motorcycles...with Quality...is
     less likely to run short of friends than one who doesn't. And
     they aren't going to see him as some kind of object either.
     Quality destroys objectivity every time.
 
     The Quality which creates the world emerges as a
     relationship between man and his experience. He is a
     participant in the creation of all things.
 
     Quality is better seen up at the timberline than here obscured
     by smoky windows and oceans of words
 
     when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things
     that have it, it all goes poof!
 

Kevin
 
After quoting ZMM page 30 Bo wrote,
 
> [...] Pirsig makes it sound as if Quality is
> something outside the Quality metaphysics and that goes against
> the said reasoning. Of course, Quality is the DQ of the MOQ*
> something that makes it the meta-level that contains itself.
>
> To harp some more on it: In Newton's Physics, Gravity has
> always existed and inside the MOQ Quality has always existed,
> but Pirsig disparages metaphysics after first having (correctly)
> stated that nobody can exist outside one.  
>
> *) Somewhere Pirsig (post-LILA) says so, but the
> misunderstanding of a QUALITY outside the DQ/SQ persists.

 
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