[MD] Quality and Chaos

[Krimel]

Krimel said:
 ... 1. Shit Happens. 
2. Quality is Chaos 
3. Quality (Chaos) has two aspects DQ (uncertainty) SQ (certainty) 
4. Value (meaning) is reduction of uncertainty.  
   (That is, meaning results from and results in,  
   our ability to create and manipulate static quality)  
5. Biological organisms are the meaning (SQ) that evolution  
   derives from chaos. 
6. As such organisms, we create meaning from chaos  
7. We are beings that create SQ from the DQ around us or to use 
   James' terms, We derive concepts from experience


dmb says:
It seems to me that the whole thing revolves around the notion that "Quality
is Chaos". If that part of your picture is undermined everything else falls
with it, more or less. We all know that shit happens. I'll certainly go
along with you there. But if Quality is not Chaos, and it's definitely not,
then the whole thing folds like a cheap card table, which it is. There are
many pieces of evidence to choose from but I like the passages from the end
of his second book, in this case chapter 30:

[Krimel]
Quoting Pirsig doesn't really help. All you can show with quotes is that he
doesn't get it either. The closest he comes is a quote I have just about
worn out:

"Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition and
since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a
'Metaphysics of Quality' is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical
absurdity.
It would be almost like a mathematical definition of randomness. The more
you try to say what randomness is the less random it becomes."

I find this instructive because it shows he almost gets it. He is pointing
in the right direction but having stared into the abyss he pulls back in
horror. He is not alone in this. Pick a philosopher at random and more
likely than not you can find them talking about the horror of a chaotic
world and the need to dismiss it as absurd or explain why it can't be so.

Same deal with theologians BTW, as I have said in the past both Christianity
and Buddhism seek to place followers in a position to mediate the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune. Christians through faith and trust in the
chaotic will of God and Buddhist through lowered expectation. 

As I have also mentioned in the past the story of Order and Chaos is the
oldest myth in nearly every culture on the planet.

[dmb]
First of all, this strikes me as a very beautiful and very powerful summary
of the MOQ. But it the point is to refute the notion that "Quality is
Chaos". If it Quality itself is "the basis of all order" and "the principle
of rightness which gives structure and purpose to all life" then Quality is
the exact opposite of chaos. That would mean you were about as wrong as it's
possible to be - and this error is about nothing less than the MOQ's central
term.

[Krimel]
Of course I see this as a radical misreading of the state of life the
universe and everything.

Quality as: "the basis of all order" and "the principle of rightness which
gives structure and purpose to all life"; is a misunderstanding of the Tao.
The Tao te Ching is: The Book of the Way of Virtue. Pirsig confuses Tao with
"the way of virtue". 

Tao is nameless and defined. It is unknown and unnamable. The Way is the
virtuous path  the sage navigates through a life surrounded by the
unnamable. Pirsig confuses our perception of the harmonious and virtuous
path with the Tao itself.

Or take it back to the ever popular Greeks

"In Greek cosmology, Khaos was the primal deity and primordial state of
matter from which the cosmos and the other gods emerged."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_(cosmogony)

"Verily at the first Khaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia (Earth),
the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of
snowy Olympus ... From Khaos came forth Erebos and black Nyx (Night)." 
- Hesiod,

It is instructive to note that the Greek had two other relevant goddesses in
their pantheon: 

"Eris... is the Greek goddess of strife, her name being translated into
Latin as Discordia. Her Greek opposite is Harmonia, whose Latin counterpart
is Concordia."
-wiki

The idea of "luck" always carries with it the opposing possibilities of boon
and disaster. Pointing to the unknowable and claiming that it is the source
of all good things is mistaking philosophy for wish fulfillment. 

But perhaps you are right the term Chaos seems to be easily misunderstood
and it contains within it the horror we all feel when we grasp its
implications. I have not interest in quibbling about terms. So pick a more
benign one for the same idea, if you prefer.

Let's call it "undefined". 
Let's call it "unknown."
Let's call it "formless"
Let's call it anything we have to guess at.

In the end it is the uncertainty that we as beings reduce when we find
"meaning".