[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Pirsig

[X Acto]

Bodvar declared:

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!!!!!

Ron:
The main thrust you keep missing is the value of making the distinction
between the experience of being and the experience of explaination.
No one is saying that they are independant, Niether is Pirsig, it is
simply more convieniant for you to interpret it that way to suit your
own needs. 
"There is no existence outside the explanations of 
existence," even the explaination called MoQ.
If MoQ is reality then every explaination is reality
if every explaination is reality then every explanation 
is a true one.