[MD] WHY MoQ IS PARALYzED

[Krimel]

> [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.

[Ham]
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.

[Krimel]
I agree that to the extent that the MoQ is broken, it won't be fixed by
parsing parts of speech. But I think you are dead wrong about it's failing
with regard to definition. The central undefined is the MoQ's greatest
strength. It is a head on recognition that reality IS undefined. It IS
uncertain at its core. Uncertainty and lack of definition is a _fundamental_
property of the world of TiTs and the world we construct internally.

[Ham]
Quality as value, moral goodness, or worthiness works well as primary 
sensibility, and I believe Pirsg was correct in his epistemology of 
experience.  

[Krimel]
This is where that built in need to have definition fails. Quality is
emanant in those things you list but it transcends them. Yes Value, moral
goodness, worthiness and experience have Quality but they do not define it
and it is not contained within nor constrained by them.

[Ham]
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.

[Krimel]
Certainly experience is subjective in something like the sense you say. It
registers, is recorded and recalled within each individual but it is not
wholly confined there. Experience requires interaction with an external
world and with other subjects. Without those external stimuli all you have
is solipsism. This is where the distinction between subjects and objects
breaks down. A world without subjects is inert. A world without objects is
solipsism.

[Ham]
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.

[Krimel]
The God that Dawkins finds acceptable is the God that Einstein, Weinberg,
Sagan find acceptable. He is a pantheistic God. They all see in Nature an
order and profoundly moving beauty. But it is not the cause or source. It is
the result of Natural forces randomly working themselves out. It is new
orders of beauty emerging as static patterns fall into constancy. In
pantheism God is an infant growing up and out of the inorganic world. It is
consciousness emerging from nature not causing and directing nature. God
like everything else is not a Being but a Becoming. God's essence is
emerging from his existence.

[Ham]
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. 

[Krimel]
My point is that we should not let our "craving" dictate our answer. The
nihilist may believe that life is an accident of Nature but in that "Oops"
we see "Aha!" Rather than looking for meaning in an external source we admit
that we must find it for ourselves. Purpose is not the gift of some
transcendent source. It is something we negotiate with our fellows and adopt
as our own. The acquisition of purpose is a personal responsibility not a
divine gift. You can hold out all you want and turn blue in the process. Or
you can believe that purpose is external to you and take what you get. But
in the taking you are making it your own. You can try to evade personal
responsibility by buying into ancient tradition but it is a shallow move and
I agree with Dawkins that it is a delusion.

[Ham]
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.

[Krimel]
Skepticism is the purest and most honest of philosophies. I would hope the
MoQ like science embraces it warmly.