[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy

[skutvik at online.no]

Andrè

15 Dec. you wrote: 

> Ni Hao Bodvar, just want to dubble check with you: Pirsig slices Reality
> up into DQ/SQ i.e. DQ and Static Quality (SQ being subjects and objects
> 'fused' into patterns).Where does Pirsig go: Quality/DQ/SQ (as though he
> suggests a division between quality and DQ/SQ??????). Or am I
> misunderstanding?

Repeatedly, for instance in the "Summary" from 2005

    The Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be 
    separated from the Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the rest 
    of the printed philosophic tradition it doesn't change from day 
    to day, although the world it talks about does.

This sounds matter-of-course, but sends us (or holds us back in) to 
intellect's S/O realm where theories ... etc. are shadows of the reality 
they try to describe. Here we see first SOM echoing down the 
millenniums: Apparent/Eternal. That the eternal is eternally changing 
(Heraclitus)  and the apparent is rigid doesn't matter. Look to Plato, his 
the eternal were "ideas". It's quite an irony if Pirsig copied Plato.     

Bodvar before: 
> A most precise observation. Even if I say that intellect is the value
> of the S/O distinction it is from the premises of this being a mere
> static split going to a certain depth and then merging with social
> value, which in its turn merges with biology ..etc.

> Not sure how to react to this Bodvar. Give me more time.

No respite ;-)  About "intellect merging with society".  All levels are out 
of the former level and if "dissected" deep enough they all merge with 
their parent level, that's basic. However it's only from the MOQ that 
this context is revealed, no level can see this.  

Bodvar before:
> The Brujo story was how the Brujo SOCIAL patterns were changed,
> but this is such a major issue so let's return to it ... some time

Andre:
> I grabbed this story to show how Pirsig changes INTELLECTUAL
> patterns.See my note above.

This IS a touchy issue and have wide repercussions. The Brujo story is 
primarily about how Pirsig conceived the dynamic/static split (instead 
of the romantic/classic). He drew it from the said story, but here it is 
about how Zuñi SOCIETY was dynamically altered for the better, in 
other words he postulates DQ at work inside all static levels (to biology 
too. See the Darwinism vs Creationism on page 148) The touchy point 
is that if so, the level transition isn't any special event, but merely more 
of what goes on inside the static levels, and that sounds wrong to me. 

Do you follow? If the old priest-run Zuñi society was static and the new 
Brujo-run society was dynamic ... or dynamically altered -  but still 
within the static social level what then when the SOCIAL-
INTELLECTUAL transition took place? How could the new pattern be 
recognized as intellectual and not only an improved social pattern? 
This worries me deeply and I have come to see the INTERNAL 
evolution as stemming from some basic STATIC rules that makes the 
levels evolve to ever greater complexity. 

Pirsig claims that the MOQ resolves the creationist vs darwinian 
struggle with this dynamic intervention in biological evolution, but the 
REAL issue is not evolution - I believe all sane creationist must accept 
fossils and such  -  the real issue is how life came to be in the first 
place, i.e. the inorganic/organic transition and here the DQ/SQ formula 
has its great impact. Besides it's this what Pirsig dwell so long upon 
with his lecture how impossible life is. Well, here things stand.

And that's enough

Bodvar