[MD] suspended in language

[MarshaV]

Hi Matt,

When RMP wrote "Dynamic Quality is a constant" I believe he meant that
Dynamic Quality is constantly present.


Now, Matt, would you please explain what you meant by "Just don't forget
your friends with different 
tastes in grammar." I'm not sure what the implications or expectations are
for your statement.


Marsha 


-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Matt Kundert
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 8:58 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] suspended in language


Hi Marsha,

Marsha said:
Zilioli states that most of the discussion concerning 
relativism turns into a debate about the definition, but he 
also thinks it worth resurrecting. ... Zilioli seems to state 
that there has been for the last few decades and is still 
today a great push to give relativism its proper respect. 
In my estimation this makes my quest well worth 
pursuing.

Matt:
Fair enough.  Just don't forget your friends with different 
tastes in grammar.

I think one of the most important things to learn, 
_particularly_ if you're trying to give 
relativism/relationalism its due, has to be how negotiate 
all the different vocable differences these relative 
individuals choose to employ.  Learning that skill is 
tantamount to learning how to make an -ism a tool, 
rather than a pigeon-hole.

Marsha said:
That the word has temporarily lost a popularity contest 
doesn't seem like the correct reason to stop the 
investigation. I really, really (I shouldn't need to stress 
this such.) find the concept intuitively correct.

Matt:
Stopping investigation is not really what I mean.  
Because the "concept," if we are going to distinguish it 
from the "word" used to tap into it, is right--I just prefer 
to use "relationalism" (or other terms) to denote this 
area that is right.  For instance, I may not much like 
Joseph Margolis, but it's not because he wants to call 
himself a relativist.  Because, on the other hand, I do 
like Paul Feyerabend, one of the more famous 
philosophers to willfully call himself a relativist this 
century.

A lot of the times, it doesn't matter which weapons one 
picks up to fight with, just so long as one is on the right 
side (however one determines _that_).  But, as Pirsig at 
the least taught us (and I would hope a relativist would), 
rhetoric does matter, naming does matter.  And 
sometimes--well, do you always want to _first_ debate 
the definition of "relativism" before talking about 
_anything_ else you may (and eventually _will_) want 
to talk about?

These aren't meant to be decisive arugments, just the 
kinds of considerations that I rest on.  I have no 
particular card to play one way or the other on relativism 
in general, and that's only because you have to wait for 
whoever is deploying it to define it.  Words like that don't 
seem worth having set opinions on or a lot of energy 
bound up in, because often it turns out, on reflection, 
there was misunderstanding at the beginning of the 
conversation.

Marsha said:
This points to a relativity based on history (memory) 
and the dynamic moment, and this seems big.

Matt:
I'm curious: what does it mean to you for Pirsig to say 
that "Dynamic Quality is a constant"?  That has never 
struck me as very relativistc/relationalistic, and always 
seemed a faux pas to me (though it's one that runs all 
the way back to ZMM and throughout his writings).

How could Dynamic Quality be a constant, when that 
transforms your sentence to say 
"constant moment"--does that just mean we're always 
"in a moment" (which is true enough)?  Yet, in that 
context "contant" means more like "identity/similarity," 
to oppose it to the varying static patterns we have.  
And what would it mean for every moment to be the 
same, "a constant"?  I've never been happy with that.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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