[MD] MOQ's "to be or not to be"

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Platt --


[Quoting Pirsig]:
> "You are correct in saying that the revolutionary assertion of the
> Metaphysics of Quality is that "Quality' or "value" is the fundamental
> constituent of the universe. However, the classification of metaphysics
> into monism, dualism and pluralism, seems to me to be an arbitrary
> classification where none is needed. The Metaphysics of Quality is all
> three: Quality is the monism. Static quality and Dynamic Quality are
> the dualism, and the four levels of static quality contain a pluralism
> of things."
>
> Here we see the beauty of the MOQ. It covers all the philosophical
> bases.  And now I see that my error in attempting to reconcile the
> intellectual level with the MOQ was to see it only from the
> static/Dynamic split. But, I have an excuse. Our language, the means
> by which we find and communicate meaning, passionately embraces
> the subject/object division, so passionately in fact that we can only
> escape its grip with colossal effort. ...

Let's look at this Pirsig comment.  He asserts that the classification of 
metaphysics into dualism and pluralism is "arbitrary" and not needed.  Yet, 
the division between intellectual awareness and experiential otherness is a 
dualism, and the physical universe is pluralistic.  If  "Quality (Value) is 
the monism," as he says, how do we arrive at the intellect that divides it 
into patterns of experience?   Even if the "patterned" (pluralistic) 
universe is an "illusion", it is our awareness of reality.  By definition a 
monism cannot contain a pluralism.  Reality is ultimately either absolute or 
divided.

Unrealized Value is an oxymoron.  Quality must be realized for it to exist, 
and in order to experience Value (as 'qualia') we must divide it.  Therefore 
the operandus modi of conscious sensibility is differentiation.  I accept 
Pirsig's ontology insofar as it posits Value as "the fundamental constituent 
of the universe."   But intellectually "leveling" Quality is not a magic 
wand that turns it into a monism.  We cannot posit Quality as the 
fundamental ground of a "monistic" reality if the values we experience are 
"pluralistic".  I submit that this is an equivocation on the author's part. 
He makes no allowance for a transcendent Reality that IS a monism.  His 
alleged "metaphysics" is not a metaphysics at all, but a euphemized paradigm 
of experiential reality (i.e., the differentiated existential universe).

Respectfully submitted,
Ham