[MD] Awareness and consciousness in the MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

Ant/Mark,

Greetings. Since some of this touches on ideas I am interested in, I am 
interjecting a few comments/questions.

[Mark]
This whole concept of "faith" is also one that tends towards 
distortion.  People have faith in science as well, to the point where 
they believe what scientists tell them.

[Arlo]
Is there anything we believe that, in your view, is not faith-based? If 
"science" is a religion, is there anything you could offer that is not a 
religion?  (I assume your argument is not that 'science' can become a 
religion for some, but that science is always and everywhere a religion.)

[Mark]
People have faith in science as well, to the point where they believe 
what scientists tell them.

[Arlo]
Peirce formulated four distinct processes by which we "fix" belief. The 
first he called 'tenacity', the stubborn clinging to a belief because we 
want or otherwise 'need' it to be true. The second he called 
'authority', that is we derive our belief from what others tell us to be 
true. The third he called 'a priori', which is like contemplative 
reflection, where we sit and rationally try to reach that which is 
'true'. And finally, scientific methodology, which he held as a process 
of direct experimentation (I don't think I need to explain the 
methodology to you).

Personally, I think we often 'fix' our beliefs by a range of these 
methods. I've never been to the moon, or personally conducted 
experiments to inquire into the makeup of the earth's core, so the 
beliefs I hold on these are unavoidably (to some extent) 
authority-derived. Of course, we select 'authority' along a similar 
spectrum from tenacity to science-methodology (I'd argue), and that 
creates an added component to this.

My question is, you seem to indicate above that 'faith' is a function of 
'authority' (and possibly tenacity) based fixing processes. If faith 
underscores them all, do you see any value distinction among them (or 
any other belief-categorizations, not necessarily Peirce), and if so how 
does that relate to 'faith'? In other words, if tenacity/authority/a 
priori/scientific methodology are all equally and fundamentally 
faith-based, how would you (or even, do you) differentiate among them 
with regards to value?

[Ant]
Though Pirsig doesn’t like to interchange the words (because the former 
term has a lot of distortive, traditional connotations from established 
religions), “God” can be used as a synonym for “Dynamic Quality”.

[Arlo]
I think Pirsig uses the term "Godhead" in ZMM explicitly in one passage. 
And his substitution exercise regarding the Tao Te Ching enforces this 
idea. My question is, apart from the 'traditional connotations of 
established religions', what would be the value of using 'God' instead 
of 'Dynamic Quality'?

We use specific words to reference or 'mean' certain things. We mostly 
adopt different words when at least some slight or differential 
implication of that term has important value we are trying to 
foreground. If we insist of using 'God', and say we are dropping all 
that other stuff, then why use 'God' instead at all? Why not, as Pirsig 
suggests, simply drop the term entirely? What is the 'value-add' of 
saying 'God' rather than 'Quality'?

[Ant]
That's a difficult issue as the MOQ is just going to be incompatible on 
some level with other philosophies and belief systems.

[Arlo]
This is a problem I have with the literary technique of saying "the 
MOQ". I think this has come to, fundamentally, mean different things to 
different people. I see some using it as analogous to "Pirsig says" (as 
Pirsig implies in describing this technique) and others using it as 
something independent of what Pirsig wrote, of which Pirsig was simply 
trying to describe, and may be right or wrong about.

Think about it this way, if I ask "Can Pirsig be wrong about the MOQ?", 
how would you interpret that? Do you see it as "Can Pirsig be wrong 
about Pirsig?" or "Can Pirsig be wrong about how he's described the MOQ, 
which exists as something for him to describe?"

Are Pirsig's writings "the MOQ" or are they simply a description (one of 
possibly many) of "the MOQ"? This is not to argue that fields of inquiry 
do not, or should not, or can not, evolve. They most certainly do 
(whether we want them to or not). But, as the theory evolves, do we 
argue that competing views are about 'which MOQ is the one-true MOQ', or 
that 'my ideas are better than your ideas'?

In other words, if we broadly consider "the MOQ" akin to a categorical 
label such as 'pragmatism' or 'existentialism', then we can come down 
and talk about more specific variants such as Jame's Pragmatism or 
Kierkegaard's Existentialism. We could talk about Pirsig's MOQ and 
Arlo's MOQ, under an umbrella of core-similarities that does not deny 
variance.

Or do we talk about 'the MOQ' as as single belief structure, akin to 
saying that the only valid expression of pragmatism is James', and all 
others are either 'wrong' or 'not pragmatism'? In this case, we would be 
arguing for the validity of calling our beliefs "The MOQ" while variance 
would be treated as 'not The MOQ'.

Going back to your question, if I rephrase it as "That's a difficult 
issue as Pirsig's ideas are just going to be incompatible on some level 
with other philosophies and belief systems", that sounds almost banal in 
its truism, no? But if the MOQ is something Pirsig merely described 
(sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly), then you can't really 
make this claim, as the argument would be that incompatibility could be 
seen as simply the current interpreter of the MOQ interpretting 
incorrectly. In other words, it would not be that the MOQ is 
incompatible with 'existentialism', but that Pirsig misinterpretted the 
MOQ to describe it as such, and a 'correct' interpretation of the MOQ 
could relieve this incompatibility. No?

By the way, nice to see you contributing again, Ant, in my opinion it 
raises the Quality here considerably.