[MD] WHY MoQ IS PARALYzED

[Ham Priday]

Hi Ian, Ron [Marsha mentioned] --

 [Ian]:
> It's all language and all language is metaphors (dead or alive)
> - you can approach understanding by using it but never
> arrive at a destination called definition.

[Ron]:
> Since SoM only deals with concrete terms MoQ ventures into,
> co-habitates and emerges within SoM principles.

[Marsha]:
> It's all analogy, every last bit of it.  So what is an
> analogy?  No-thing.  Inside and outside, it's
> no-thing.  Individual=Subjective=no-thing.

Are linguistics and metaphors all that the MoQ is cracked up to be?
If that's so, then how can anyone take it seriously?  Why bother to 
understand it?

I for one believe that Pirsig was on to something of philosophical 
significance, but never quite achieved his goal.  Definitions are important, 
although not everything lends itself to a proper definition.  On the other 
hand, refusing to define a fundamental term or principle used throughout a 
philosophical thesis is suspect.  I've said many times that the essence of 
philosophy is the concept, not the word(s) used to define it.

Quality as value, moral goodness, or worthiness works well as primary 
sensibility, and I believe Pirsg was correct in his epistemology of 
experience.  The problem is that experience is proprietary to an individual, 
hence cannot be assumed to be the fundamental reality.  Whatever 'DQ' is 
supposed to represent cannot logically be quality or value as these terms 
are universally understood.  Had the author not felt metaphysics too 
"restrictive" to his theory, he might well have come up with a less 
conditional (and problematic) term for his all-encompassing source.

Postmodernists deplore referring to 'God' as the primary source; yet the 
name is a contraction of 'Good' which is equivalent to Pirsig's Quality. 
Even Richard Dawkins, author of "the God Delusion", admitted to the 
possibility of a transcendent "intelligence" existing beyond the range of 
present human experience.  St. Anselm defined God as "a being than which no 
greater can be conceived."  The 10th century Arabian philosopher Ibn 'Adi 
postulated that since every definition mirrors an essence, God must also be 
one in essence.  Five centuries later, Cusanus theorized that reason, 
plurality, and multitude allude to a unity to which neither otherness nor 
multiplicity is opposed.  He called this unity The Infinite.  I've stuck 
with Essence.

My point is that we all crave an answer to the enigma of existence beyond 
factual knowledge, and unless we are nihilists who believe that life is an 
accident of nature, most of us hold out for a transcendent source.  That 
Pirsig chose to include DQ in his thesis demonstrates that he did, too. 
Let's not
be such skeptics that we reject the insight and understanding that 
philosophy  offers us.  If. indeed, the MoQ is "paralyzed", why not 
determine the faults and fix it?  Surely the author would prefer this to 
skepticism.

Essentially yours,
Ham