[MD] A problem with the MOQ.

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Anthony --

> By keeping Dynamic Quality undefined is the exact reason
> why the MOQ is more cogent and relevant than any other
> metaphysical system that you're likely to find in any modern
> Anglo-American philosophy department. In fact (to turn round
> a certain 1961 diagnosis!), you'd have to be some kind of nut
> to pre-determine completely what will be considered good
> in the future. Immediate experience tends to be a mixture of good,
> rather indifferent and bad experiences so to make undefined
> Dynamic Quality as a start of the empirical train works
> metaphysically. It's therefore not really dogmatic but, in fact,
> a postulation that works.
>
> Ham, if you codified DQ, you'd kill the MOQ. Any definition of
> Dynamic Quality would be limited and misleading. As Elvis said,
> "That's [just] the way it is".
>
> As far as codifying the MOQ is concerned, I think it works
> pretty well. The MOQ takes into account more things in reality
> than an SOM can coherently take account of and, through the
> notion of cosmological evolution, also explains how this reality
> hangs together in a better way

If the MOQ were so vulnerable that it would self-destruct on definition, it 
would be useless as a working philosophy.  I can understand the inability to 
define an unknown.
Yet Pirsig insists that everybody knows what Quality is, so it can't be an 
unknown.  Moreover, what defines a philosophy is the ontology on which it is 
structured and which gives it meaning both within and outside of the 
definable (empirical) realm.

There is no need to "pre-determine what will be considered good in the 
future", nor should that be the purpose of philosophy.  Basically, a 
philosophy is a particular conception of reality that can be comprehended in 
terms of its own epistemology and ontological paradigm.  It must 
satisfactorily answer the question 'What is?' as well as provide an 
explanation for creation and causal process in time and space.  It must also 
account for the conscious subject and its relation to the cosmos.

Only from fundamental principles can a meaningful cosmology be derived. 
While the MOQ alludes to fundamentals, its claim to be a "Metaphysics of 
Quality" is unsubstantiated by its author's moral postulates (dogma). 
Except for what is loosely described as "betterness", the nature, source, 
and dynamics of Quality are not only undefined but left to speculation, 
which consumes most of the posting on this forum.

In my opinion, the MOQ as currently presented is bereft of 
ontology.altogether, as is evidenced by confusion over the existence of the 
conscious self and the meaning of "static" and "dynamic" as related to 
Quality.  A hierarchy of moral levels based on a human precept of evolution 
does not constitute a philosophy, let alone a metaphysical theory.  When you 
hang a philosophy on events in time, you restrict the concept to temporal 
experience, which amounts to naturalism, the 'logical positivism' that 
Pirsig despised.  Simply calling things "patterns" does not eliminate 
subjects and objects; instead it deprives subjects of the agency needed to 
appreciate Value in a relational context.

These are some of my thoughts concerning problems with the MOQ, Ant, 
although I fully suspect that others entertain similar thoughts but are 
unwilling to express them.  In my opinion, Mr. Pirsig made a bold start 
towards an original philosophy with the valuistic idealism outlined in his 
SODV paper.  His autobiographical novels played on those themes to good 
literary effect, but I believe much more could have been postulated on the 
Value premise had the author been willing to develop a formal ontology in 
the classic tradition.  I think that's why references to James, Rorty, 
Strawson, Howison, Dennett, Peirce, and others keep appearing in these posts 
as if to "fill in" what Pirsig left uncompleted.

But I know you are persuaded that the MOQ is a sufficient contemporary 
philosophy in its current form, and I commend you for your efforts to 
promote it.  Hopefully you will consider me a 'valuist', at least, and 
forgive the criticism that this thread invited.

Yours respectfully,
Ham