[MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy.

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Matt

Thu Feb 5. 

Bo before:
> What do you think is the logic behind the ambiguity of a Quality different
> from Dynamic Quality?

Matt now:
> I think Pirsig wanted to have an unfolding monism that, on the one hand,
> eliminated the Platonic sense of a reality that had intrinsic joints

As in the "theism" thread I wonder how difficult and subtle you 
(people) can possible make something so simple and straightforward. 
That Pirsig wanted to bring Socrates, Plato, Aristotle & CO, who were 
the instigators of SOM, to "justice" is elementary. As it is that the 
SOM has ONE intrinsic joint - the S/O. 

> that needed to found, 

??  

> but on the other hand dealt with Parmenides' denial of change -- this
> monism evolves. 

Pirsig's "mission" in ZAMM was to trace the roots of what he saw as 
the loss of Quality (he had already had the Quality epiphany) in 
contemporary USA (and the West in general) and found it in SOM 
which origin he tracked to the said Greek thinkers. He also spotted 
the last times when Quality ruled to be the Greek Mythological era. 
And then he went on to write a new metaphysics based on the Quality 
as Reality's ground. But this necessarily had to become a dualism - 
there are no other realities - and it's here the big wrong step is taken, 
but as I understand that you refuse any more talk about that .... 

However, Pirsigs tracking of SOM (what necessarily must become the 
intellectual level in the final MOQ, just like the said mythological must 
become the social) I have no objections about, i's totally convincing. 
A magnificent achievement. The search for eternal principles, 
meaning something transcending the mythological "explanation" of 
existence, you know Chronos (time) arriving and the unfolding of the 
god realm. Then the cosmologists who suggested various elements 
as reality's ground, this in contrast to "immaterial" elements: 
Heraclitus' "Change", and Parmenides "nous" resembling our mind, 
but this is still pre-S/O times so "fire" was not more objective than 
"change" and "nous" were subjective. 

What it all boiled down to was a dualism based on something 
perishable in contrast to something NOT perishable. After centuries it 
emerged with Socrates as "Apparent/True", with Plato it became 
"Shadows/Ideas", with Aristotle "Form/Substance". These may look as 
contrasting among themselves, but these are facets of the same 
"fleeting, temporal, seeming, illusory - slash - permanent, eternal, 
real" and represented a total different existence from the (social) one 
it replaced and through more twists and turns ended as our SOM.

> The ambiguity is induced to suggest a basic, dual perspective with
> which we can view the world -- 

As said there are only dualities. Even if "theism" like to imagine a pre-
existing God who created the world, there is no God without the world 
and vice versa. It is a dualism, and all efforts to create monisms is 
futile.

> we can view it as all one thing for certain purposes, the main one of
> which is to help remind us that the current plurality we view the world
> for most common day purposes might be shaped differently. 

Waiting for the smoke to clear ;-)

Bo