[MD] MOQ Recursion

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt began]
Whether the MOQ is an intellectual pattern or a metaphysics or something else...

[Arlo]
You do realize what the "M" in "MOQ" stands for, don't you? 

I am convinced this problem is two-fold; beginning with the narrative genre
used by Pirsig ("The Metaphysics of Quality says...") and the solidification of
the acronym (The MOQ) that leads people to have to ponder whether "the
METAPHYSICS of Quality" is a metaphysics "or something else"... I mean, c'mon...

The end-result is the SOLists deifying the Word, confusing the "map" with the
"territory" it attempts to describe. And so we see ridiculous statements like
'when the MOQ is defined and analyzed it becomes an intellectual pattern'.

The Metaphysics of Quality IS an attempt to define and analyze Quality. It does
not precede definition, it IS definition. What should be clearly 'When Quality
is defined and analyzed it becomes an intellectual pattern' gets confused into
something that makes no sense.

[Platt]
I simply call it a world view and believe the better discussion is whether or
not the MOQ is superior to other world views.

[Arlo]
Are "world views" patterns of value? Are you saying there are other "world
views" on your level above intellect, or outside intellect, or wherever off
which Pirsig's metaphysics exists in parallel? I'm not saying better or worse
here, at all, just saying these other "world views" are to the MOQ like
Cartesian are to Polar coordinates; not morally inferior according to the
hierarchy, just "worse" in your estimation?

[Platt]
The "Aristotelian framework" is what I consider the intellectual level to be,  
dominated by S/O patterns.

[Pirsig]
"First of all I should say that I don't know whether Phædrus' claim that
Quality is the Tao is true. ... That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of
what he thought and said, but it isn't. I think it's a statement he would have
agreed with himself, since ANY description of Quality is a kind of DEFINITION
and must therefore fall short of its mark. I think he might even have said that
statements of the kind he had made, which fall short of their mark, are even
worse than no statement at all, since they can be easily MISTAKEN for TRUTH and
thus retard an understanding of Quality. ...

No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was REASON. He showed
a way by which reason may be EXPANDED to include elements that have previously
been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational. I think it's the
overwhelming presence of these irrational elements CRYING FOR ASSIMILATION that
creates the present bad quality, the chaotic, disconnected spirit of the
twentieth century. ...

... The dictum that Science and its offspring, technology, are "value free,"
that is, "quality free," HAS GOT TO GO. It's that "value freedom" that
UNDERLINES the death-force effect to which attention was brought early in the
Chautauqua." (ZMM, emphases Arlo's)