[MD] the sophists

[skutvik at online.no]

Andre.

18 May.

Bodvar before:
> I see DMB's footprint here, but the MOQ's fundamental is NOT Pure
> existence/Concepts, but Dynamic/Static Quality. FYI

Andre:
> And immediately we appear to be at war again Bodvar! The 'MOQ's
> fundamental is Quality out of which is sliced DQ/sq. (just bear with
> me for a minute before you are beginning to rant and rave again. Mr.
> Pirsig presents his MOQ from a static perspective, he says so quite
> explicitly in LILA). This has ramifications because how do you convey,
> communicate the Quality idea(!)arrived at 'dynamically' to an
> audience? Well, you present it through books and through talking about
> it. You present it in a way that you hope people will most likely
> understand you. You do this intellectually, through metaphor, ideas,
> concepts and this is inevitable.

Am I allowed to speak ? If Pirsig's presentation of the MOQ is "from a 
static perspective" because it is conveyed by language, how would a 
dynamic presentation be carried out? No, this about language as the 
intellectual level and language as the static bad wolf is a blind alley, its 
rules may be static, but WHAT language conveys can be anything. My 
dictionary defines intellect correctly as the ability to separate what's 
objective from what's subjective.       

> But your final remark, noted above, betrays your frustration and bias.
> This is a direct reference to William James who Mr. Pirsig has
> accorded his appreciation and similarity with regards to his radical
> empiricist theory and his pragmatic approach (also theory, by the
> way).

Frustration, yes, but my bias is for the MOQ and that makes even 
Pirsig a target when he errs ... by embracing  William James. He 
(James) may have "attacked SOM" as DMB says, but his attack led 
nowhere.

> You are no fan of William James and by implication no fan of Mr.
> Pirsig (the 'latter-day', mature Phaedrus!). You seem to be rejecting
> radical empiricism in the way it presents its fruits, its insights to
> the world. 

I know what empiricism means, but have no idea how the radical kind 
differs from the ordinary.

> You appear to be rejecting James''immediate flux of life which
> furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
> categories', Northrop's 'undifferentiated aesthetic continuum'

I fully accept a dynamic, immediate, undifferentiated .... whatever, but 
this did not furnish material for reflection. According to ZAMM it 
furnished SOM, the only fall-out at that stage. In the final MOQ three 
levels preceded SOM or intellect.  

> the Buddha's 'Nothingness'( within which there is great working) and
> also by implication Mr. Pirsig's Dynamic Quality... as the source from
> which DQ/sq is abstracted.

Well, here you go again. The MOQ says most non-abstract that there 
is the DQ and its SQ levels. The "Quality/MOQ" is a disaster because 
it starts an eternal regress of "moqs". If the MOQ is a abstraction 
because of being conveyed by language, then the utterance that 
Quality is outside the MOQ is also an abstraction .. and so on. Drop 
this silliness.   

> I think this rejection is based on your notion that you want
> desparately the MOQ to have emerged out of SOM and out of your SOL
> interpretation ( to give it status I suppose). But, as I have pointed
> out to you very often (and never got a response) this simply isn't the
> case. ( See Anthony's PhD and textbook if you do not believe me...
> well you probably believe me but you reject it!). Mr. Pirsig says
> himself that it arrived 'dynamically' without the use of the
> analytical scalpel.

Phaedrus of ZAMM says that it was his despair over SOM that gave 
the term "Quality" its particular meaning.  

    Others wondered at the time, ``Why should he get so excited 
    about `quality'?'' But they saw only the word and its rhetoric 
    context. They didn't see his past despair over abstract 
    questions of existence itself that he had abandoned in defeat. 
    If anyone else had asked, What is Quality? it would have been 
    just another question. But when he asked it, because of his 
    past, it spread out for him like waves in all directions 
    simultaneously, not in a hierarchic structure, but in a concentric 
    one. At the center, generating the waves, was Quality. (ZAMM 
    p. 210)  

His "past despair over abstract questions of existence" were of course 
from SOM's premises, hence the peculiar place Quality got because it 
found no place within the S/O matrix. Why the latter-day Pirsig wanted 
to tune down SOM's importance (as springboard to the MOQ) I don't 
understand.  

  
> Within MOQ terms, call it the interplay, LILA's dance, in a
> relationship between the intellectual level and the code of
> art.Mr.Pirsig refers to this as the 'Dynamic Code'. This 'Code'
> 'refers to something that cannot be conceptualized but is known to be
> better e.g. the code an abstract artist 'follows' when producing art.
> Stapledon's (1929, p 8)'dark god' illustrates it well: In literature
> and art, war is waged against authority and restraint.We are familiar
> with the cruseade for spontaneity,instinct, the sub conscious, and
> with the cult of the creative and non-rational'. (Anthony's textbook,
> p 46)

> This you will probably reject because of your bias but if you and when
> you accept Mr. Pirsig's definition of the intellectual level, i.e the
> critical (not just thinking, not just language!)the CRITICAL (also
> meaning: conscious) manipulation of symbols, 

Well, this was a new twist, In "Lila's Child" and the PT letter Pirsig 
didn't  speak of any critical (if you mean skeptical) manipulation of 
symbols,  but if you mean using language in a critical/skeptical way 
regarding social value I agree. THAT is exactly what intellect's purpose 
was and still  is.  

> you may appreciate that you can also creatively manipulate symbols and
> this is what Mr. Pirsig has shown us. This creative process has not
> only led to Phaedrus' Quality idea (!) in ZMM but it has also produced
> the MOQ of LILA, out of which arose a new set of symbols for us to
> consider.( to be used as a guide, a finger pointing at and a way to
> orientate our dharma towards on our quest to betterness for ourselves,
> our fellow sentient beings and future generations)  

OK, again if intellect is seen as criticism/skepticism of social value and 
-further - that this same critical attitude was used by Pirsig to pry the 
Quality Idea loose from intellect  .... that is something I can vouch for. .    

> To wit: Dynamic Quality and static quality patterns which Phaedrus
> 'manipulated' into an evolutionary order. This is what Mr. Pirsig says
> himself about their 'origin': 'I didn't get the idea (!) that the MOQ
> is an evolutionary theory of value patterns from anybody. It just
> arrived Dynamically on day the way a good chess move arrives
> Dynamically. 

An insight may arrive in mysterious ways, but it is always a problem 
that triggers the dynamic solution. And it was SOM's paradoxes that 
triggered the MOQ.     

> There was probably some stream of consciousness, a series
> of intellectual jigsaw puzzle pieces that didn't fit anything and were
> immediately forgotten, when among them appeared this puzzle piece which
> fit everything. It seemed of higher quality than anything I had thought
> before on the subject and so became incorporated into the static
> pattern of the MOQ'. ( from Anthony's Textbook, p 41). 

It was not INTELLECT that provided the Q solution, it was Intellect-as-
SOM's problem that triggered the dynamic process.     

> But of course this way of relating is totally wasted on you Bodvar.
> You reject the insights, plus the way they are presented from radical
> empiricism in the same way as you reject the insights of the Eastern'
> mystical philosophies. This is why you say they are 'woolley'. (Mickey
> Mouse stuff).

No, rejection at all, this was a "Dutch Opening".  

> I hope it has been of some value to others and, to the more
> enlightened on this discuss I'd appreciate to hear where I err.

Yes, I'm really interested in hearing from the "enlightened". 

Bodvar