[MD] MOQ and the Future: An Inquiry into Usefulness

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 13 Nov 2009 at 23:41, ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote:

> [Platt]
> If you want to put words in Pirsig's mouth or claim he doesn't really mean what
> he says, have at it. But, most people outside of the insular world of academia
> don't try to deconstruct an author's text. 
> 
> [Arlo]
> We each provided a quote of him using the word "create". Why is your example
> alright, but mine "academic deconstruction"?
> 
> I say again, the MOQ is clearly an emergentist theory. He uses the word
> "create" in several different ways in LILA, and I think its the storyteller in
> him using commonly understood vernacular. Since he uses it very contradictory,
> I don't hold any one "quote" as evidence of your Qualigod concept.

Of course you don't. You only see what supports your neoscientific 
Qualipantheism. 

> Here is the problem with the word "create". If you say "Quality created carbon
> atoms", then you leave no choice, no value, no response, to the subatomic
> particles. They form carbon because Quality orders them to do so.
> 
> At every level in the MOQ, the beauty is that ALL patterns are the result of
> smaller patterns responding to DQ. "Carbon atoms" are not "made", they appear
> as subatomic patterns exercise value preference. This particular value
> preference does not come to them from some mandate, nor is it in any way
> related to the existence of "man". 
> 
> This passage from LILA (repeated) demonstrates clearly the tenor of the MOQ.
> "When inorganic patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality
> postulates that they've done so because it's "better" and that this definition
> of "betterness" -this beginning response to Dynamic Quality-is an elementary
> unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based." (LILA)
> 
> This "response to DQ" is the foundation of all static patterns. These patterns
> are  not "created", they are a "response".

Typical academic obfuscation. By itself a response does nothing  What's 
meaningful is what happens as a result of a response.      

> A "carbon atom" is a response of subatomic particles to Dynamic Quality. DQ
> does not "create" it, DQ simply is the value-ground in which those particles
> are able to exercise this preference. 

We're still waiting for you answer explaining why, how and from what 
this "value ground" of yours "emerged."

> You should try deconstructing Pirsig sometimes, Platt, you might actually
> understand him.

Only someone from the insular world of academia would glorify 
deconstructionism.  

> Ironically, in your "planned and enacted world of Qualigod", there can be no
> freedom, no DQ, and that's what's actually funny-sad. If we are "part of the
> plan", then there was NO freedom, NO DQ at the "lower levels". They are what
> they are because they were made to be so. Sadly, as I said, even the view that
> "freedom starts with man" leaves your personal existence an "oops". So really
> to overcome THAT, you have to posit that the cosmos was ordered and controlled
> to produce YOU. I know how warm and fuzzy that must make you feel...

Transparent rhetorical device: inventing quotes. But, expected..