[MD] A larger system of understanding

[david buchanan]

Platt said:

The MOQ escapes the intellectual level by including within its system of understanding that, "Thought is not a path to reality,".a direct contradiction of intellectual values. [AND LATER SAID] This is from Chapter 5 of Lila where Pirsig discusses the mystic's objections to a written metaphysics. He went ahead anyway but included in the MOQ a critical element that is "too obscure for existing language," i.e., outside the intellectual level. Unless one acknowledges the indispensable role of DQ which cannot be defined and is thus non-intellectual, one's understanding of the MOQ is weak indeed.



dmb says:

I agree that it's important to understand Pirsig's assertion that "thought is not a path to reality" but I don't think it means that the MOQ escapes the intellectual level. Neither does Pirsig.

"The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.  Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics. 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." (Lila, 64)

Let me boil this down a little. He's saying that metaphysics can be NONE of the things that "Quality" is. He's saying the metaphysics of "Quality" is a contradiction in terms precisely because metaphysics has to be definable and knowable, that metaphysics has to be a set of intellectual abstractions, that metaphysics is ESSENTIALLY a dialectical definition. "Quality" itself is none of these things. It's what you know ahead of definition. It's direct experience prior to intellectual abstractions. The "Quality" in his first book (or what he's going to call Dynamic Quality) is "the primary empirical reality of the world" (Lila, 67).

He was already saying this back in ZAMM, although in broader terms. This is where the container problem is. He's talking about the same logical contradiction when he says,...

"We call these analogues reality. And they ARE reality. ...Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.  Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself.  I remember this fragment more vividly than any of the others, possibly because it is the most important of all." (ZAMM, page 251, near the end of chapter 20 just before he breaks out his copy of Tao Te Ching.)

That's what he talking about when he says "thought is not a path to reality". Metaphysical thoughts and concepts and definitions are among the "many marvelous analogues" we've invented in response to the primary empirical reality, as a response to direct experience. It is this pre-intellectual reality that can't be defined and can't be used as a metaphysical chess piece. But the MOQ is not the pre-intellectual cutting edge of experience. It is a set of ideas and definitions because that's what the word "metaphysics means". And that's why there will always be a discrepancy between the MOQ and reality. The MOQ is conceptual and direct experience is pre-conceptual. The MOQ is intellectual and immediate experience is pre-intellectual.

It's really not very complicated and Pirsig's books are quite clear and consistent on this point. And it certainly does NOT support Bo's view. In fact, it very much shows that his equation is bogus.



Thanks,
dmb 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail is redefining busy with tools for the New Busy. Get more from your inbox.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_2