[MD] kill all intellectual patterns

[david buchanan]

Mark began with a misconception:
I am heartened that you are willing to discuss Quality, or the "view through Quality" which is what MoQ is about.  ...As far as I understand it, killing all intellectual patterns is a suggestion for those who get stuck in the minutiae of MoQ and do not address the big picture which is Quality.


dmb says (and this goes double for Marsha):
The purpose of this forum is to discuss the MOQ. Quality itself (DQ) cannot be discussed or put into an email. The notion that it doesn't really matter what Pirsig thinks about the MOQ is not even remotely plausible. It's absurd. The MOQ is just a name for what Pirsig thinks. 
Is Pirsig correct? Is he right? Those are good questions but one cannot even begin to ponder them until one first understands what he's saying. If you don't know what he's saying, then you can't possibly know whether it's true or not. I've only ever tried to address the first question; what is he saying? Why am I interested in addressing that question because posters like you and Marsha don't know what he's saying.

"The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called "Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions. [This means Quality itself can NOT be discussed.]  ..Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A metaphysics [like the MOQ, the one we're allegedly here to discuss] must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics."

That is why your ridiculous anti-intellectual just can't fly. We can NOT talk about the mystical reality but metaphysics is exactly the opposite. To discuss philosophy (or anything like it) one MUST use words, concepts and definitions and do so very carefully.

Thus, you and Marsha have it exactly backwards. You could not be wronger if you tried.


Like I said, the various attempts to dismiss reason, intellect, metaphysics or otherwise undermine an intelligent discussion of the MOQ only serves to show a basic lack of understanding on your part. It makes no sense to kill al intellectual patterns in a philosophical discussion group. If you wanna do that on some mountain or in some monastery, knock yourself out. If you have no respect for excellence in thought and speech, then you have no business here. Obviously.