[MD] Moving on

[Andre Broersen]

Mark to Andre:

The use of words such as "the undifferentiated aesthetic flux" is misleading, in my opinion, for that is not what Quality is.  We could call DQ that.  The Tao may be more accurate, but the Tao is more
fundamental than Quality.  The Tao means "the Reason", or "the Way".> From the Tao comes the one, which is Quality.  The Buddhist Nothingness is a different concept altogether as I have tried to
explain to Marsha many, many times.  So, we need to be careful not to confuse things here.

Andre:
Sorry Mark but I find this confusing. My reading of ZMM is that both terms refer/point to the same idea. Remember Phaedrus going over to his bookshelf and picked out the Tao Te Ching and where he substituted Tao for Quality? 'He read: 'The quality that can be named is not the Absolute Quality...The names that can be given it are not Absolute names'.

Anthony's PhD cites Blofeld expanding on the meaning of the word 'Tao':
'Literally meaning 'way'or 'path', it was later used by the...Taoists to mean a combination of the undifferentiated unity from which the universe evolved...' (p37)

And a little bit later: 'The Dynamic Quality viewpoint of the MOQ corresponds to the notion of sunyata or nothingness as understood by Nagarjuna...while the static quality viewpoint...of the MOQ corresponds to sunyavada (i.e. the conditioned component or world of maya). Sunyavada describes all the conceptions of reality including metaphysical views, ideals, religious beliefs, hopes and ambitions'. (p 43)

(This, by the way shows Marha's frustrating practices of imposing a Dynamic viewpoint on a static metaphysics, of confusing sunyata with sunyavada, DQ with sq, which is fine from a Dynamic point of view but not from a static one...and that is the world we live, work, breath... and write posts in.)

Anyway, so how can you suggest that 'the Tao is more fundamental than Quality'?

Mark:
The presentation of SQ is for purposes of convenience in order to explain Quality as a metaphysics.

Andre:
Well, you may be meaning the same thing but I'll put it in my own words so we may understand eachother. Static patterns of quality refer to ANY EXPERIENCE THAT IS REPEATED, and as it is repeated over and over again it becomes less Dynamic and more static. Phaedrus' example in LILA (among others) of buying this fantastic new record and listening to it again and again after which it gradually loses it's appeal (its Dynamic effect).

It isn't just 'convenience', the MOQ is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good. It adds that this good is not a social code or some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience. (LILA, p373)

Mark:
The same goes for SQ, for SQ cannot describe itself, a finger cannot point at itself.

Andre:
The first part is different to the latter part. As an evolving jungle of static patterns of value can you not describe yourself? Or other static patterns of value? Static intellectual patterns of value do nothing else BUT describe and manipulate I would think.

Mark:
But many who I work with understand that Science is simply another metaphysics; another manner in which to describe "what is".

Andre:
And, of course within the MOQ 'science' is a static intellectual pattern of value.

Mark:
In fact I have stated many times that Pirsig's use of that term is completely misleading.  Quality is not subjected to some "outside" force of evolution.

Andre:
That's right. The gradual unfolding of static patterns of quality through the DQ/sq interplay is an 'evolving' development no? Don't you find it a useful conceptualization that cosmological evolution, as understood in the MOQ, provides a RATIONAL (if broad) moral grading of values from inorganic patterns through to biology, society and finally to intellect? (see Anthony's PhD p 100 with emphasis)

Peace.