[MD] The Quest for Quality

[Ham Priday]

Ron, Marsha, Bo [Chris mentioned] --

[Ham, previously]:
> Tell me, Marsha: Does Pirsig acknowledge DQ as the primary source?  IS 
> there a primary source in the MoQ?  If you can't
> answer this affirmatively, then I would submit to you that the
> Quality hierarchy has no fundamental reality and is merely a
> paradigm for experiential existence.

[Ron]:
An accurate assessment.

[Marsha]:
> RMP states that Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable. 
> Quality is beyond conceptualization.  I think it would be safe to state 
> that experience is the
> primary source of patterns.

But the experience (of patterns) doesn't qualify as the source (of reality). 
You've got to have patterns before you can experience them.  Where do they 
come from?   I'm not asking you for definitions.  But unless the capacity to 
experience (i.e., sensibility or consciousness) is primary, and is what 
Pirsig really meant by Quality, your answer confirms my assertion that the 
MoQ has no essential foundation.

[Bo]:
> At times you make sense in the sense of writing in a way
> that makes sense. You must be from an age close to mine,
> born in the thirties.

Thank you (I think).  I was born in 1931, which makes me old enough to have 
witnessed a glocal war and the displacement of spirituality by 
existentialism which is objectivist nihilism.

> Do you agree that we - the Western culture at least - live in a
> mind-matter split existence?  That is the point of departure for
> the MOQ. ...

Absolutely.  The S/O duality is not a philosophy.  It is our experiential 
reality.

> Or perhaps I should start with the even more fundamental
> question: Do you agree with Pirsig's opening move that there exists no 
> human beings without a notion of how existence is ordered  ... before 
> spoiling it by making metaphysics the Aristotelian kind of  "a theory 
> about an
> already theory/reality-divided existence"?

The ordering of the physical universe, including its moral values, is the 
work of man's intellect, not the primary source.  I do not blame Aristotle 
for taking an
SOM approach to knowledge.  Indeed, the systemization and classification of 
objective knowledge is not only beneficial to man but is the most effective 
methodology we have for understanding relational (i.e., physical) phenomena. 
But Science is not Philosophy; it is based on empirical data derived from 
and limited by human experience.  Ultimate reality is "meta-physical", which 
means that it transcends experience and is indefinable in empirical terms 
and principles.

You and Ron seem to understand my metaphysical approach, for which I am 
grateful.  I'm also encouraged by your postscript "That's all for a start". 
If we can continue in this fundamental vein, it may even be possible to 
"make (some) sense" of what Christoffer started on 9/12 as The Quest for 
Quality.

Essentially yours,
Ham

_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/