[MD] The first cut.

[MarshaV]

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 23, 2012, at 6:24 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 
> dmb said:
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> ...Pirsig's purpose is not to spread otherworldly mysticism. The MOQ is aimed at improving our modes of analysis, our ways of thinking, our philosophies. Undefined Quality (DQ) has everything to do with this project, but the metaphysics itself is conceptual and intellectual and it is given to us in words. The shape and meaning and purpose of the MOQ is not, not, not supposed to be some elusive mystery. It's a set of ideas that one can understand rightly. Or not. 
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> "The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to SELECT the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. .. I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.  It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." (ZAMM, p. 281-2) 


Full quote:
"The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. [He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say. It's long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so much of these facts after they are ``observed.'']  I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice."

So what did you, dmb, omit here?  This:  

"He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say. It's long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so much of these facts after they are ``observed.''"




> "... Dynamic Quality [is] the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one ...  Dynamic value is an integral part of science.  It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." (LILA, p. 366)                          
> 


Full quote:
But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one [- is another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method.]  Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself. 


And what was omitted here?  This:

"- is another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method."


Marsha:
Seems to me that dmb is trying to suppress, by his insistence on words and concepts, Dynamic Quality, the "higher moral order".



Marsha