[MD] Metaphysical issues: DQ

[Ham Priday]

DMB, Chris and Bo --


 [dmb says:]
> The trick, I think, is to realize WHY the MOQ says that
> DQ can't be defined, WHY we can assert the reality of DQ
> even though it can't be captured in a static formula or otherwise pinned 
> down.
>
> Because this Quality or value comes before anything else
> in experience, Pirsig calls it "the primary empirical reality". (Lila, 
> page 66)

[Chris says]:
> Indeed, Indeed.  But everything we do is dependant on the
> composition of our stable patterns of Quality, that much must
> be true. If we think about it, it stands to reason, that if humans
> evolved into a higher species, and developed all new ways of
> sensing Quality, the DQ would not be any different, but we
> would respond to it, and "understand" it better. I'm not disputing that 
> the primary experience is Quality, but that really
> doesn't matter in any meaningful way other than in relation to
> how we interpret that first experience.

[Bo says]:
> I agree with Christoffer and I will use "life" as an example
> (because Pirsig speaks at length here) science (as intellect) is
> conflict with religion (as social) over how life (the bio. level)
> came to be (Darwinism vs Creationism) Pirsig says that the
> MOQ resolves this conflict How? By doing what I say above
> of reducing science to an intellectual pattern and religion to
> a social pattern. Their respective claims that life must be the
> result of either chance or divine interference are both
> wrong for the very reason of being static level thinking.

This discussion would be so much simpler if you all realized that everything 
you talk about is part and parcel of "empirical reality", so there's no need 
to divide it up into levels -- it's already differentiated.
What characterizes existential (empirical) reality is that every thing and 
event is different from every other.  You can say that they all have Quality 
(good or bad) in common, but that's a psycho-emotional or intellectual 
judgment on the part of man.  The quality or value of a thing is not its 
essence or cause, inasmuch as our experience gives it being and difference 
gives it a separate identity.  What is significant about labeling Science as 
an "intellectual pattern" and Religion as a "social pattern"?  In truth, 
both involve social and intellectual aspects, as does everything else.  Is 
it logical to regard Life as "biological" when it has psychic, organic, and 
mechanical (inorganic) components?

If all you're doing is redefining empirical reality, it can only be a 
paradigm for what we all experience.  That isn't philosophy; it's chopping 
up the universe into categories that have meaning only with respect to an 
exotic metaphorical hierarchy known as MoQ.  We can all sense quality, 
morality, love, joy, fear, hatred, and patterns in the world about us.  They 
don't require explanation.  But the essential source of this pluralistic 
experience remains a mystery.  If you really want to discuss philosophy, get 
metaphysical!

Give us your ideas on the primary source of relational existence, its 
meaning in the life-experience, its purpose for mankind.  Otherwise you are 
simply making up new word games about a physical universe that scientific 
investigators have well categorized and documented in typical Aristotelian 
fashion.

Just trying to point the way ...

--Ham