[MD] A larger system of understanding

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 13 Jul 2010 at 11:26, david buchanan wrote:


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.

[Platt]
The MOQ without DQ isn't the MOQ.You can't have one without the other.