[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Pirsig

[skutvik at online.no]

Matt,  All

You wrote an "Addendum on Pirsig".  

(I snip freely from your article)

> And then ZMM ends (there´s a chance I might be forgetting
> something). The trick is that Pirsig offers a few half-hearted stabs
> at sysematizing his thoughts about Quality (don´t forget the diagram
> in Ch. 20),

The diagrams in ZAMM aren't half-hearted stabs but contains the 
Quality Idea far as it was brought there, the blunder is the the Reality 
box above the SOM diagram that changes into Quality in the MOQ 
diagram and divides into the Romantic/Classic split. It's the DQ (or 
RQ) which spawns the SQ (or SQ) not any Quality that spawns the 
MOQ. This is Pirsig's variety of Einsteins "cosmological constant" that 
E. regretted the rest of his life, but the latter day Pirsigs seems blithely 
unaware of its grave ramifications for the MOQ. 

This blunder originates in the paragraph below (from LILA).      

    "By even using the term "Quality" he had already violated the
    nothingness of mystic reality.  The use of the term "Quality" set
    up a pile of questions of its own that have nothing to do with
    mystic reality and walks away leaving them unaswered.  Even the
    name, "Quality," was a kind of definition since it tended to
    associate mystic reality with certain fixed and limited
    understandings.  Already he was in trouble.  Was the mystic
    reality of the universe really more immanent in the higher- priced
    cuts of meat in the butcher shop?  These were "Quality" meants
    weren´t they?  Was the butcher using the term incorrectly? 
    Phaedrus had no answers. . . . [ellipsis Pirsig´s] That was the
    problem this morning too, with Rigel.  Phaedrus had no answers. If
    you´re going to talk about Quality at all you have to be ready to
    answer someone like Rigel.  You have to have a ready-made
    Metaphysics of Quality that you can snap at him like some
    catechism.  Phaedrus didn´t have a Catechism of Quality and that´s
    why he got hit." (124)  

Pirsig says he violates Dynamic Quality "by even using the term .." and 
seems unaware that even thinking is as much of a violation as 
saying/writing it, this is the blind alley I wish he hadn't started down, but 
stuck to the "no-one can avoid metaphysics" opening, because that 
one is rock solid: There is no existence outside the explanations of 
existence, the explanation which says says there is an existence 
independent of our explanations IS THE SUBJECT/OBJECT 
METAPHYSICS!!!!!

Thus LILA could have started where ZAMM left off by just changing 
the Romantic/Classic into Dynamic/Static, enlarged the static level as 
we know it, and skipped the renewed effort to prove the Quality 
=Reality sentence, which is neither provable nor important: The same 
chain reaction that old Sarah initiated could have started around many 
seed crystal. There are several unassinmilated concepts as we know. I 
have nothing against Quality, but Beauty, Harmony or Intuition  are just 
as indefinable, it is the Dynamic/Static and the old S/O as a static level 
which is the stroke of genius. 

Had he done that he would have had SOM by the same deadly grip  
that Phaedrus had it in ZAMM had and every piece of the puzzle would 
have found its place. But alas he was obsessed with the Quality issue 
and let the MOQ fall victim to it by postulating it as just one possible 
static theory about Quality. A child will see that Quality here has 
assumes the same role as "objective" in SOM and MOQ its 
"subjective" role, and thus the MOQ became a SOM subset before it 
could get off the ground.   

Matt:
> What sometimes gets lost in metaphysical system-building is the
> person doing the building, and what the building is for.  

This is not true Matt, the subject has been the latter day philosophy's 
focus after a long and futile pursuit of  the object, but the subject will 
also lead to frustration - guaranteed. MOQ's thesis is that all static 
levels are incomplete and that the goes for intellect's S/O too, it  will 
only reveal the social level if pursued hard and long enough. This is 
what most of this discussion fail to realize, like Ham they are dead 
sure that the subject gazing out on its world is the one given 
immutable fact - and that the MOQ resides inside this subject - but this 
isn't so, there once was no S/O  - search the old books of the bible 
(examples of the social reality according to Pirsig)  they are devoid of 
any "I think about the world". The S/O arrived as told in ZAMM, it 
assumed its role as SOM, but has been superseded by MOQ's 
Dynamic/Static explanation and relegated the role as its 4th. level      

> "Muddling through" is one of Dewey´s favorite images, one that Rorty
> loved to promote.  Between Pirsig´s lament about getting broad-sided
> by Rigel and the Catechism of Quality, there´s Pirsig´s chapter on
> metaphysical platypi-the outcome of previously made cuts in the
> metaphysical firmament, previously made choices about which
> questions deserve answers.  Pirsig says early in that chapter that

    "Saying that a Metaphysics of Quality is false and a subject-
    object metaphysics is true is like saying that rectangular 
    coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false" (Lila 115, 
    Ch. 8).   

Nor do I subscribe to the "map" metaphor, it sounds so obvious but is 
SOM's about an objective reality and our different subjective maps of 
it. The "one can't avoid metaphysics " goes against the grain of  this.    

> Both are used, are determined better or worse, relative to the purpose
> with which you are using them.  The figure standing there weighing the
> options between the two alternatives is the philosopher, who sometimes
> goes missing in the attempt to limn the structure of reality.  

What Matt means is inscrutable as usual.

> And if someone insists on asking whether Quality is in the subject or
> object?  Just say, "both-the object´s made out of inorganic, and maybe
> biological static patterns of Quality, and for the subject just tack
> on some intellectual and/or social static patterns of Quality."  And
> then you have your answer to a bad question.  The questions won´t stop,
> but do they ever? 

Even less viable is this way of subsuming  SOM. Phaedrus of ZAMM 
said that subjects + objets is "intellect"  and that is what it should have 
continued to be in the full-fledged MOQ. Had I just understood why 
Pirsig parted company with his old self and constructed this impossible 
mindish 4th level ...well at least he left an opening for you SOM-guys 
to go on with your philosophologizing. 		 	   		 


Bodvar