[MD] Taking words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Matt, dmb, etc.:
One important Pirsigian usage of "DQ" is talk about being attentive to the distinction between concepts and reality, between DQ and sq, but then such "DQ talk" is always conceptual. It's sq. That's the only "trivializing" that is going on from my view. It is part of being attentive to the distinction between concepts and reality to say so. "Talk about DQ is sq" is what I think is meant by "DQ is a compliment paid after the fact." 


dmb says:
Yea, that's roughly what Matt said. I think it's more than a bit confused. It undermines the MOQ's central distinction and, even worse, you end up converting DQ into sq. Once you do that, just about everything in the MOQ is going to get messed up. I mean, because the distinction is so central, the effects of this mistake are very far reaching.

Yes, talk is static and conceptual while DQ itself is neither static nor conceptual. All three of us agree on that part, apparently. And yes, since talking is always static and conceptual, talking about DQ is also static and conceptual. Okay, but now you're only talking about the talking, not about DQ itself. The MOQ is full of words and concepts and definitions, as any philosophical system MUST be. This simply isn't a problem, not even when the central term is undefinable and refers to a pre-verbal and pre-conceptual experience.

It's a silly kind of specious reasoning. Goes something like this: "You said your feelings were beyond words but you were using words when you said that, so your feelings are not at all beyond words." It's not just that the logic is goofy. It also has a way of just breezing right past the meaning and substance of the feelings and the claim about them and instead redirects the focus of attention to a rather trivial and irrelevant point. 

It goes without saying, I suppose, but the nature of this medium is such that words and concepts are the whole game. That's what we get in Pirsig's books and that's what the MOQ is made of. This whole deal is static intellectual quality from wall to wall and that's not a problem. The central term within this system of static concepts is static and conceptual, of course, but it REFERS to direct experience prior to static concepts. The term itself is static and intellectual, because that's how talking works, but it POINTS to the immediate experience itself. I mean, the words "static" and "Dynamic" mean what they mean in relation to each other. They are opposites. That's what they mean when we're talking about the MOQ. Nobody thinks experience itself can be known directly through an e-mail. So we are just talking about the MOQ's concepts and what they mean in static intellectual terms, with words. No problem if some of those words dare to reference something other than more words. Gasp!

DQ is the pre-verbal present, which is exactly what compliments after the fact are NOT. By conflating DQ with DQ-talk, you have converted DQ into sq. To say DQ is a compliment paid after the fact is to say that the dynamic present is the static past. It's nonsense. To say DQ-talk is talk is to belabor the trivial and the obvious for no good reason. It's no good either way.