[MD] DMB and Me

[skutvik at online.no]

Steve

16 Mar you wrote:

> I'm wonderring right now whether Pirsig ended up enforcing a dichotomy
> of his own. Or was he just making a useful distinction between
> primary/secondary experience and static/dynamic quality? I'd like to
> read him as suggesting a useful distinction (within metaphysics taken
> like Kuhnian science as philosophical problem solving) rather than
> enforcing a dichotomy (traditional metaphysics).

I use this your original input, after going through the Kundert & 
Buchanan encrypting machines ... phew!! Yes,  the MOQ is a 
dichotomy, there are only dichotomies, the "just making a useful 
distinction ...etc" is untenable, to be useful it has to be the real thing.    

The MOQ provides a new fundamental dichotomy -  DQ/SQ - instead 
of - Subject/Object, isn't that pretty straightforward? And that this is a 
"problem solving" you bet, it makes short thrift of the S/O-generated 
platypis.   

> I suppose I pretty much asked him that in the letter I wrote him, but
> didn't get an answer. Clearly Bo takes Pirsig as doing traditional
> metaphysics such that DQ/sq IS reality.

You read me right. SOM did not declare that "there is no quality", thus 
to declare "there is quality" does not mean anything. It is the DQ/SQ 
dichotomy which is revolution.   

> I prefer to read Pirsig as saying Quality is reality. DQ/sq is a nice
> tool for thinking about reality. 

You see the mess that the Quality/MOQ "meta-metaphysics" has 
created, the MOQ is totally log-jammed the only fish that thrives in 
these muddy waters are the Matt and DMB kind. Kudos to you dear 
Steve for not liking this state, but you will certainly not have any replies 
from Pirsig, he knows well that he is the cause of the impasse. 

> I always took DMB to be in the second camp, but I can see how his
> insistence on the primary/secondary dichotomy from which he criticizes
> Rorty for getting things all wrong may rather put him a version of
> "Bo" side of the argument--not anywhere that I should think that DMB
> would want to be.

If DMB has begun to see the impossibility of the Quality/MOQ atrocity. 
Good

Bodvar