[MD] MOQ Recursion

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Mary]
I have a question for you now.  How does equating Quality, Values, and Morals
with Intellectual concepts progress an understanding of the MOQ?

[Arlo]
I do not "equate" Quality, Values and Morals with "intellectual concepts".
Quality is the undefinable void that gives rise to all forms of value patterns;
from inorganic to intellectual. This is akin to asking how equating value with
one particular type of patterns of value progresses an understanding of
Pirsig's metaphysics, making the false assumption I am confining Quality, Value
and Morals to intellectual patterns of value only. I am not.

But, when you ask how equating Quality with ALL patterns of value, as the
"force" that holds those patterns together, well then I'd say that illuminates
Pirsig's work brightly. 

Intellectual patterns of value are not amoral, without value or absent Quality.
They, like all other patterns of value, are formed BY the Quality event.
Pirsig's metaphysics, a high-quality intellectual pattern of value, was formed
in response to this Quality event. 

I ask in response, how does stripping the intellectual level of Quality, Value
and Morals achieve anything except meeting an emotional need to damn intellect?

[Mary]
If,as you say, the levels of Quality are Intellectual concepts, how does this
clarify what is meant by a pattern of values?

[Arlo]
A pattern of value is something which seems to persist over our experience of
"time". This is what a pattern is, it holds together, has some degree of
"continuity" throughout our ongoing experience. 

The simple fact that we are here, talking about these intellectual concepts,
years after Pirsig first speculated his metaphysics, indicates to me his
metaphysics are a stable pattern of value. 

The "levels" are intellectual concepts Pirsig came up with to describe (or
define or analyze) Quality. As I said to Marsha, they are the Metaphysics
(defining and analysis) of Quality (the undefinable). They are an attempt to
describe a "reality" only approachable by analogy. 

The Metaphysics of Quality is not "reality", Quality is "reality", the
Metaphysics of Quality is an attempt to describe that "reality". 

[Mary]
What makes this different from a subject-object understanding?

[Arlo]
A "subject-object understanding" is one that begins with the premise that the
fundamental metaphysical distinction is "S/O". Pirsig's intellectual pattern
does not hold this premise, in fact it rejects it.