[MD] Doug Renselle & Language

[John Carl]

Krimel:


> [Krimel]
> My point, restated goes something like this. The MoQ as I read it was never
> aimed at a technical audience of any kind. It was a mass marketed attempt
> to
> raise a few philosophical issues. Turning it into a formal system with
> technical jargon seems at odds with that.
>
>
John:  I agree completely.




> I have repeated complained about, for example, Pirsig's choice of the term
> Quality. He uses it to mark the undefined but in so doing he uses a term
> loaded with denotations and connotations which we are supposed to set
> aside.
> But we don't; we can't. So in effect the term has a special technical
> meaning within the MoQ but the net effect is mere ambiguity.
>
>
John:

I agree again, and wrestling with the issues of ambiguity in the way we use
Quality, was a big bug-a-boo of mine for a while.  And then I figured it
out.  (on my own, no thanks to you guys)


The only problem with your classification is  your pejorative "mere".   I'd
consider the net effect a GOOD ambiguity.  This is a case of a necessary
ambiguity that produces meaning - that keep the dialog going and  evolving.
Ambiguity that creates transcendance - along the lines  of the "I AM" forms
of labeling/marketing.

Where a non-ambiguously defined meaning would lend itself more to that
intellectual encapsulation that everybody craves, it would actually be
destructive of the central idea of the MoQ, eh?




> The term "dynamic" fairs much worse, especially in the hands of many of
> Pirsig's interpreters. The whole AWGI school seems to think the term means
> something wonderful and magical. It is always something "good" or "better",
> something to relish like serendipitous snatches of melody floating through
> an open window and arresting our steps. But in common usage "dynamic" means
> fluid and changing, something unpredictable and often disastrous. Here I
> think the common usage is far more accurate than the imagined technical
> meaning.
>

John:

Here I think there is a two-fold path.  Subjectively, DQ is usually a bad, a
disaster.  We get strongly statically attached to what is.   But
objectively, from a distance or over time, it's seen as good.  A flood
spreads nutrients and volcanoes bring life and minerals to the soil.   It
certainly doesn't seem good to a drowned or burned village.

The MoQ stresses the positive aspects of DQ - takes the objective side of
the debate or dichotomy, because it's plainly GOOD to do so - that is,
interpreting DQ as positive, has a pragmatically useful orientation for the
subject.  Interpreting DQ chaotically, does not.

At least that I can see.




>
> But the larger issue is the problem of developing a metaphysics of the
> undefined rooted in precise technical meanings. There is something creepily
> oxymoronic in that.
>
>
"There is something profoundly deep in that."   Is what I'd say.  Do you
prefer profound deepness or oxy-moronism?

Don't answer.  I already know.

John