[MD] Science and the MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

Hi Ian,

No, I don't think we disagree. I personally like 
strange loops and recursions, my point I suppose 
was that we have to accept this circularity and 
its limitations (and benefits) when we start to 
define something according to itself.

There are certainly, as Ron points out, 
"intellectual patterns" we talk about here that 
are descriptions of the MOQ. But a metaphysics 
(any metaphysics, I would say) is more of an 
orientation, a "Way", the active construction of 
the system in the first place. SOM runs into the 
same self-referential question, is SOM-itself a 
"subject" or an "object"? I'd say "neither", but 
a way of framing the world INTO subjects and objects.

You see the "problem", of course. Any system that 
"divides" the cosmos can't be contained within 
any of its divisions. By definition, it is above those divisions.

Pirsig mentions this in ZMM. "Quality is the 
continuing stimulus which our environment puts 
upon us to create the world in which we live. All 
of it. Every last bit of it. ... Now, to take 
that which has caused us to create the world, and 
include it within the world we have created, is 
clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be 
defined. If we do define it we are defining 
something less than Quality itself." (ZMM)

I'm obviously on a "verb" kick here, and its not 
entirely Ulysses S. Grant that is to blame, 
although that quote sums up a lot of what I think 
in very few words. Pirsig, by the way, also 
supports this. "Quality is not a thing. It is an event." (ZMM)

In Pirsig's talk with John on the existence of 
ghosts for Indians, he says, "Those Indians and 
medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, 
but the context in which they thought was completely different." (ZMM)

And that captures (I think) what I've said. The 
MOQ is "the context in which we think".

It is a Way. A Weltanschauung (in the untranslated German sense).

And let me be clear, I don't think this is just 
Pirsig's MOQ, but applies to the nature of all 
metaphysical inquiries. Pirsig says as much in 
LILA. "There already is a metaphysics of Quality. 
A  subject-object metaphysics is in fact a 
metaphysics in which the first division of 
Quality - the first slice of undivided experience 
­ is into subjects and objects." In this sense, 
I'd argue, "metaphysics of Quality" is redundant. 
There is Quality. And there are Metaphysical 
descriptions of that Quality. We more or less 
look past this redundancy due to Pirsig's 
particular use of the word "Quality", and maybe that's part of the confusion.

So we start with an undefinable Quality, that is 
an "event" not a "thing", that is approachable 
always only through allegory and analogy, our 
"way" of dividing Quality becomes the "context in 
which we think", our Way of Being (or maybe 
Metaphysics with a capital "M", but this is 
active not descriptive). And then attempts to 
describe this context form the intellectual 
patterns we refer to as a metaphysics - which 
then kicks off the self-referential recursions 
since these are descriptions can never contain that which they describe.

Make sense? (If so, you may be alone. :-))

Arlo