[MD] Overcoming the System

[Ian Glendinning]

As ever Bo, I agree with a lot of what you say there ... I'll need to digest.

One observation / question for now.

You said
"... the MOQ is supposed to transcend [the intellectual level], but is
prevented ..."
"... this quandary is just what the MOQ is supposed to be a relief from ..."

Matt sees this as a confining "box" too.
I just don't see what "prevents" the development ?

Regards
Ian

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 10:23 AM, <skutvik at online.no> wrote:
> Hi Matt
>
> 27 Aug.:
>
> Steve said in a different thread:
>> > Pirsig never expected the MOQ to be the final word on reality. His
>> > work is a contribution to an ongoing cultural process of self-creation
>> > that cycles from such innovation as his MOQ to criticism to revision to
>> > the next innovation. That the MOQ is not immune to this historical
>> > process does not diminish Pirsig's genius, it is just to say that Pirsig
>> > is a "finite, historically situated being."
>
> Matt:
>> This is one of the interesting dynamics in Pirsig's written work--his
>> movement between wanting to say, "Continue the MoQ, the _MoQ_ will
>> help us, the _MoQ_ is the best metaphysics around" and wanting to say,
>> "Every person needs their own philosophy, because the arc of America
>> is our individuality."
>
>> When you put the two together, that's when you get a weird monster
>> like, "The MoQ was created to be transcended.  Let's work _on the MoQ_
>> so that we can transcend it."  That's when you get the weird dynamic
>> from people telling you at one point that you're rejecting the MoQ
>> (and that's bad) and the same people telling you at a different point
>> that you're mired in other people's philosophy.
>
> You point to something important and it stems from the intellectual
> level (SOM) that the MOQ is supposed to transcend, but is prevented
> from). Intellect has an alleged reality "out there" that we are supposed
> to deliver theories about, the Aristotelian "metaphysics" no different,
> it's an all-encompassing  theory, but nevertheless about the alleged
> "reality". From this Aristotelian (intellectual) point of view the MOQ is
> just a good approach, and it can theoretically be used as a stepping
> stone to even better approaches, yet not IT. This way the MOQ is (as
> Steve says) not the final word
>
> But this is the "MOQ an intellectual pattern" assertion that prevents it
> from transcending SOM or Intellect which is supposed to be a MOQ
> pattern.and thereby a reality of its own with no umbilical chord to the
> Aristotelian kind. This Q-reality one either can refuse to enter or one is
> caught in it like a black hole. This above - MOQ an intellectual pattern
> - makes the MOQ incomplete, I compare it with Socrates whose
> obsession was TRUTH but oblivious to the SOM that was to grow from
> it. Pirsig DID however make the MOQ but his obsession with Quality
> and seeing as independent of the MOQ .... OK everybody knows my
> frustration here.
>
>> Steve, I think, has given us the exact circumlocution for this problem
>> in Pirsig.  _The MoQ_ has no entity outside of Pirsig: it is _his_
>> philosophy, _his_ writing.  For Pirsig, or anyone, to say that the MoQ
>> recognizes it's own contingency, or that it will itself be
>> transcended, is just to say that _Pirsig_ is a finite, historically
>> situated being.  It is just to remind us of the fact that the system
>> was created by a person responding to his own personal, unique
>> problems, which as general as they sometimes may appear to be, may not
>> always be our own problems, particularly in the new, yet unforeseeable
>> future.
>
> Most subtle observation Matt, but this quandary is just what the MOQ
> is supposed to be a relief from. But as said Pirsig isn't all clear here. It
> sounds as if he sees a future when/if the MOQ is rejected still  being a
> Quality Reality. Almost as silly as his assertion that SOM is/was a
> "moq". Admittedly MOQ's intellectual level is the VALUE of the S/O
> distinction but in that case it's stripped of the metaphysical "rank".
>
>> We _have_ to come back to the individual a lot more often than we do
>> when reading Pirsig.  Pirsig himself would seem to suggest it, and the
>> conceptual machinery is important, but it is _not_ the end, it is only
>> the _means_, in the bigger picture of life.
>
> The individual (it's mind) and the "conceptual machinery" (thoughts
> conveyed by language) have no place in the MOQ, If we try to include
> these we end in the absurd - all is mind, all is language. You seem not
> to understand the MOQ. It's about spotting existence's ground and
> then the dynamic/static split of this ground. If the individual is "the
> measure of all things" a metaphysics of the individual - a MOI - is
> overdue and I buy it as I buy a metaphysics of language, its the
> Dynamic/Static instead of the Subject (individual)/Object that counts.
>
> Bodvar
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>> Matt
>>
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