[MD] Some historical perspective

[skutvik at online.no]

For John.

25 Oct.:

> Blind Man Bo wrote the most ridiculous words I've yet witnessed on this
> forum: 

> You once pointed to Bohr's "we are suspended in
> > language" thus it's the ocean we swim in, there's nothing not
> > conveyed by language in this world.
 
> When the blind man touches the elephant, true information  is conveyed.
> When the Blind Man formulates the words, the truth is gone. 

A little friendly bantering is OK particularly when about a  most 
interesting topic. Now collect your wits and listen. The MOQ postulate 
that existence's fundamental divide is the DQ/SQ one, this in contrast 
to SOM's subject/object divide. 

The (elephant) allegory somehow indicates that senses presents 
TRUTH and that words (=language) is a secondhand derivation. Now 
if you compare it to the S/O and DQ/SQ divides, which of the these 
does it correspond to? The S/O I'd say. 

Now, for some reason this Reality/Language distinction has seeped 
into the MOQ as some meta-metaphysics that overrides MOQ's 
DQ/SQ. Tragically it's Pirsig himself who introduced it with his 
embrace of William James (and DMB peddling this a revelation) and 
his (Pirsig's) weird "Quality/MOQ" postulate, namely that the MOQ is 
secondhand because it's a static - written - thesis fundamentally 
different from the Quality Reality it describes.

This is not only un-moqish, it's outright SOM-ish Again, MOQ's divide 
is Dynamic/Static, not between Qualify and its linguistic presentation. 
There is nothing that is NOT language, silent as thoughts or spoken 
out loud ... or written. Even the "elephant" story point could not be 
conveyed without language. This, however, does not prevent us from 
"speaking/thinking" about a pre-language or non-language reality, i.e. 
that language entered the Q-evolution at some stage

As little as MOQ's postulating a Dynamic Quality is "static" and makes 
the MOQ inferior to what it is about. Wish I had a metaphysical 
grindstone and could put you nose against it (SMILEY) 

Bodvar