[MD] Dans Bitterness over Betterness

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Horse]
MoQ static patterns are no more or less real than subjects and 
objects (in my view) - they are used to represent experience and not 
experience itself (DQ).

[Arlo]
Hi Horse. I think we are on the same page, I am (again) perhaps 
quibbling over minutia, but that's where I am these days.

So I think you are using "real" in the statement above in the SOM 
sense of the word, e.g. "existentially real". Right, in this regard, 
MOQ patterns are no more "existentially real" than subjects or 
objects within SOM.

But I think, as I see it, the key is not to label everything 
"illusions" but to reconceptualize what is meant by "real".

As I understand it, a MOQ counters the notion that "real" is an 
existential beingness independent of experiential value. Within a 
MOQ, "real" is that which has experiential value. In other words, 
"real" is "what has value".

So no, static patterns of quality do not have any more existential 
reality than the "objects" of the SOM world, Pirsig has not simply 
replaced one existential "real" for another. But what he does is move 
our understand of "real" away from an independent, existential 
"thing" and into the valuation of experience.

So that Hamburger I had for lunch was not "an illusion", it was real, 
but its "realness" is not derived from some independent existential 
beingness, its "realness" was derived from the experiential value 
that this pattern held.

It is in this sense that Pirsig is able to exclaim that social morals 
"are as real as rocks and tree" (LILA). It is not that they manifest 
some independent existential beingness, but that they have VALUE in 
experience (which I realize is redundant).

So I guess my point is that the illusion is that "realness" is 
existential, when instead "realness" is experiential (or empirical, 
if you will).

Does this make sense?