[MD] What is the MOQ?

[skutvik at online.no]

Chris ... Ham.

22 April  Ham wrote:

> Hi Chris -- 

> > I think I get what Bo means by this:  To a SOMist
> > everything is subject and object. To a MOQist everything
> > is Quality. If you ask both of them: "but hey, where did
> > Objects/Quality come from?" both of them will answer
> > that 'it was always there', perhaps adding: 'waiting to be
> > recognized by us humans.'

> > That, and a religious understanding of things isn't part of
> > a system, it is what makes a system possible.

> > But I will ask Bo this then, how does the MOQ and the
> > SOM differ?

> > In fact, I will ask all of you that.

I couldn't find your original post Chris so I just use this "blurb". 

You won't find a SOMist because all are SOMists, and my thesis 
is that Pirsig - by leaving the "intellect" he sketched in ZAMM - for 
the one he presented in LILA made the MOQ a SOM in disguise: 
another theory about an ineffable reality. That of calling 
reality=quality does not mean a thing. Thus those who defend the 
orthodox interpretations are just as much SOMist as Aristotle or 
Descartes. But they believe themselves to be staunch MOQists.  
This is the difficulty and irony of it all.

Then I go directly to your question: "...How does the MOQ and 
the SOM differ?  The difference is that existence is S/O-divided 
in SOM and DQ/SQ-divided in the MOQ (that of making SOM 
(minus "M") into MOQ's top static level is also crucial, but you 
know that) Pirsig's postulate of a Quality before the DQ/SQ-
divide is the source of all trouble. Look! SOM does not postulate 
any "reality" ahead of the S/O, thus there's no Quality ahead of 
the DQ/SQ. MOQ's first postulate is Reality=DQ/SQ!!!! 

Ham said:
> Again, this is a question that confuses the two philosophical
> ontologies that Pirsig addresses.  The MoQ claims to transcend
> subject/object experience by regarding Quality as the undifferentiated
> source or potential. 

Yes, Pirsig put great emphasis on an undifferntiated source, but 
this is no "transcendence" of SOM, there was for example  
William James who claimed something ahead - deeper - than 
subjects and objects, but this never "took off" because it was 
absorbed either by the subjective or the objective. This is what 
happened to the MOQ too, in LILA it became an "intellectual" 
pattern of an intellect that become "subjective" (where all levels 
are according to Ian) and the undifferentiated Quality (ahead of 
the MOQ) shows uncanny likeness to Kant's "Ding .." the 
ineffable reality that the MOQ is just another theory about. See, 
the MOQ have disappeared into SOM's subjective and Quality 
into its objective realms.

And that's all for today, my dentist waits for me.

Bo