[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

Hello!  I’m new here.

I have just read ‘Lila’ (and just before that ‘Zen’), and I’m
stoked to come across this forum.  I had been wanting to discuss, and it
looks like y’all take it seriously here.

I haven’t been sure where I should start.

I thought maybe I had better mention metaphysics generally, that I am
ambivalent about it from the start, that it might very well be
impossible to apprehend (necessarily, due to the constraints of
individuation): but I will rather just point out that Mr. Pirsig
adequately provided these warnings.  I can’t locate the warning he
gave about his ambivalence at the outset right now, but on page 399 (of
409, I have a hard-back, November 1991, Bantam edition at the moment),
chapter 32, is the latter.  In fact, he might even go too far! 
“Strictly speaking, the creation of any metaphysics is an immoral
act…”  And, “You never get it right.”  I also was interested,
from here, in then trying to find redemption for the maltreated word
‘objective’.

Next, and separately, I thought maybe, rather than play the critic (the
‘philosophologist’), I should provide some real philosophy, my
____________ (thoughts on metaphysics) itself.  But that’s …

I have decided to start here:
	Let me say something nice real quick.  I see what all the fuss is about.  Quality, morality, dynamic capability: I can see why Mr. Pirsig could have thought sharing this stuff was the highest Quality thing he could do at the time!
	Now, critically, in the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) we seem to jump from the undefined fundamental ‘Quality’ (or value), skipping all the physics and metaphysics, to the highly developed concept ‘evolution’, which evolution is proposed to follow the SERIAL progression: 1) inorganic, 2) biological, 3) social, 4) intellectual, 5) Dynamic.  And we are given some rules about morality concerning ‘evolution’, but those rules don’t spring logically from Quality, or at least we are not provided the logic, but rather, we must trust Mr. Pirsig’s capacity at divining the moral code!
	On my page 309, chapter 24, “We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual FREEDOM [my emphasis: I misread this until just now…] for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good.  These moral bads and goods are not just “customs.”  They are as real as rocks and trees.”
	There seems to be something not worked out properly here.  Something glossed over at least.  It is important to highlight the difference between ‘Freedom’ in the above.  In the initial evolutionary progression, the higher is entirely subject to the lower: biology cannot deviate from the dictates of the inorganic.  But the lower leaves options for the higher, and we are to trust that when it comes to this freedom, the higher is to dominate the lower.  So, from the above excerpt, if the social represses the biological that is moral, and absolutely, but at the same time it would be equally as moral for the intellectual to repress that same social repression!  Is this contradictory?  I think that Phaedrus is comfortable that it is not!  But even if the fight is moral theoretically, what are we to say of the conclusion of the fight: remember, the environment in which the fight is had, and thus the outcome, might be influenced by immorality nearby.
	I’m still setting the stage for my critique.  Perhaps we need not worry about outcomes because immoral outcomes will engender new moral fights…
	On my page 364, chapter 29, “The idea that satisfaction alone is the test of anything is very dangerous, according to the Metaphysics of Quality.  There are different kinds of satisfaction and some of them are moral nightmares.  The Holocaust produced a satisfaction among Nazis.  That was quality for them.  They considered it to be practical.  But it was a quality dictated by low level static social and biological patterns whose overall purpose was to retard the evolution of truth and Dynamic Quality.  James would probably have been horrified to find that Nazis could use his pragmatism just as freely as anyone else, but Phaedrus didn’t see anything that would prevent it.  But he thought that the Metaphysics of Quality’s classification of static patterns of good prevents this kind of debasement.”
	I am troubled a great deal by the sentence in the middle describing the Nazis ‘overall purpose’.  Since the author doesn’t offer any concrete examples, I can only guess, but I guess that his classification of the Nazis’ Quality as being dictated by “biological patterns” would be a self-admitted great mistake (never mind, after sleeping on it, the qualification “dictated by” seems to cover it, but I will leave the progression of yesterday’s argument in tact).  While jewishness is arguably a biological patter (transmitted by the mother), and while homosexuality (they were exterminated too) is arguably a biological pattern, hatred of these biological patterns is an intellectual pattern, and not a biological or a social pattern (though there may also be biological and social patterns that reinforce that intellectual pattern…uggghhh)!  It may not be a very developed intellectual pattern, but it is certainly an intellectual pattern.  No?  (and how close does this general problem of classification, which can probably get even more difficult, mimic the problems that Phaedrus himself found with the subject-object divide?!)
	So, when Phaedrus said “There are different kinds of satisfaction and some of them are moral nightmares.”…  The first time through, following the prior analysis – which analysis might have defended the morality of both sides of a fight about the same issue – you might have thought this fine.  You might also have substituted “very low Quality state” for “moral nightmares”.  This Phaedrus would admit is perfectly proper; on my page 97, chapter 7, “Because Quality is morality.  Make no mistake about it.  They’re identical.  And if Quality is the primary reality of the world then that means morality is also the primary reality of the world.”  And then on page 98, the start of Chapter 8, “The idea that the world is composed of nothing but moral value sounds impossible at first.”  But now, if Phaedrus must admit that the moral nightmare of the Holocaust (or even if I have to pick a less controversial example) was not just a low quality fight between different levels of his metaphysics, but rather a complex, low-quality-simultaneously-high-quality fight all within the ‘intellectual’ level itself…
What is it?  What does the MOQ say about intra-level oppositions?  How
can a metaphysics based on a single, simple concept resolve any
conflict?  In deed, how can a metaphysics based on one single, simple
concept even produce a conflict?  Isn’t the existence of conflict
proof that a metaphysics based on one single, simple concept is
inadequate?
Certainly Phaedrus wouldn’t rest by telling me to be satisfied with
his front-of-the-train sense, and to forget my own!  Would he?
Does this get resolved by saying that intra-level conflict is the result
of subjective discrepancies vis-à-vis the objectively real Quality of
that level (at least for the static-intellectual and Dynamic levels)?
That is, through our efforts (centered on Phaedrus’ from Lila) have we
transcended the problem Phaedrus started with, or have we succeeded in
conserving it?  Both?  Or have we gone awry?
Or am I wrong, or missing something, or…?

I slept on this last night (probably I would have posted it if my
registration had been confirmed) and I got to thinking about
‘FREEDOM’, somewhat miffed that I had totally read that passage
wrong the first time through.  I got to thinking: was ‘freedom’ the
source of Phaedrus’ serial hierarchy?  And had he even given us this,
the principle to produce it?  Did Phaedrus intend to say that Quality is
value, is morality, is freedom?
	I had noted two passages on this as I read:
	On my page 115, chapter 9, “It certainly felt right.  Not subject and object but static and Dynamic is the basic division of reality.  When A.N. Whitehead wrote that “mankind is driven forward by dim apprehensions of things too obscure for its existing language,” he was writing about Dynamic Quality.  Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of all things, completely simple and always new.  It was the moral force that had motivated the brujo in Zuni.  It contains no pattern of fixed rewards and punishments.  Its only perceived good is freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality itself--any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and kill the ongoing free force of life.”
	Is this a different way of saying the same thing, or is Phaedrus trouncing his own metaphysical bedrock?  Anyway, I have much that I could say about that paragraph, but the second excerpt:
	On my page 220, chapter 17: “When THEY [my emphasis] call it freedom, that’s not right.  “Freedom” doesn’t mean anything.  Freedom’s just an escape from something negative.  The real reason it’s so hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean Dynamic Quality.”
	Perhaps this is the point.  And perhaps there isn’t much point in a critical analysis of the underlying intellectual framework for the terminology.  There is such a thing as ___________ (Quality–morality); we have access to it; and it is best if you can tune into it rather than trying to analyze what it was before, and then perhaps trying to predict where it might be…  If you get off track the intellectual analysis might be invaluable as a corrective, but the goal of the correction is to get back in tune, good working order, whatever.  The motorcycle is for riding, the maintenance is a bonus – a pre-requisite, but a bonus none-the-less.

Hmmmm, it seems the expectation of a discussion was enough for me to
work through my hang-ups on the book; I may not actually need the
discussion.  Perhaps it is still best that I post though…

Thanks for having this discussion group,
All the best,
Tim     
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  rapsncows at fastmail.fm

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