[MD] Words and Metaphysical Mysticism.

[David Harding]

Hi Mark,

> Thanks for your response.  I have cleaned this thread up a bit and
> addressed a couple of your points.

Okay.

> There are no 'rules' here. There's just what's good and its good to say
> that truth is high quality intellectual patterns.
> 
> Mark: We get into an interesting situation here if this is what is said.
> Yes, "we all know what is good", we can say there is truth to such a
> statement.  If however we relegate truth to high quality patterns and say
> that such a depiction is good we end up with a paradox.  There is no way to
> separate truth from good, or Truth from Quality.  They become exactly the
> same thing.

Logically, yes, you're right.  But Quality is before logic.  If you keep trying to subordinate Good to try and understand it intellectually, you will never do so because it is before your ideas about it.. Quality is direct experience itself, before Mark or anything else for that matter..  The only way you can agree with this is by *seeing* the harmony created by placing quality first.. If you don't do that, then you will never agree or understand.

> The solution is to say that , "yes, they are exactly the same thing".  In
> this way the dichotomy presented by Pirsig is a false one.  He creates an
> enemy of truth, and does not replace it with anything different.  I have no
> problem with this result, since it is we who create distinctions where no
> distinctions exist.  Such distinctions are made simply for rhetorical
> purposes and fall apart on logical examination.

I disagree.   Pirsig does replace truth with something different.  He replaces truth with Quality.  Once one does this, things become fabulously more coherent than they previously were..  

> Mark:  "Everybody knows what is good" is a statement of truth.  If such
> statement is simply a qualitative judgment then "knowing what is good"
> becomes relative and implies that some people know good better than others
> which contradicts the very pronouncement itself.
> 
> In saying that “Quality is before me and you”, You are projecting the
> concept of Quality being before the concept.  This is of course traditional
> in many religions.  It creates a source for our concedptualization of a
> source.  It is much easier to say that we are Quality rather than speculate
> that it exists before us.  The world unfolds at every instant.  It is not
> segregated into a preliminary phase followed by our phase.  There is no
> time for that to happen.  We do not exist one step removed from Quality
> because if so, then you have created two different universes, and one is
> sufficient for MOQ.

I disagree.  It is better to create two 'universes' of Quality than one.  It is better to say that Dynamic Quality is before all things and cannot be defined, while all our definitions and attempted definitions of DQ are sq.  The reason why it is better to create these two universes is because of how beautifully such a description describes our experience.  The emphasis here is on the beauty.  Where does that beauty come from? It is not mine any more than it is yours.  It is before all things.. It comes from DQ, like all things..

> David:  What makes the MOQ a good idea is how it represents experience
> beautifully.
> 
> Mark: Yes, this is a good statement, but cannot be stated categorically or
> the "goodness" disappears, and we are left with a fact.  Facts have no
> place in Quality for they represent Truth coming before quality.  But, I
> know what you mean.  It is a different way of lo0oking at reality.

Facts do have a place in Quality.  For example - good facts are valuable. 

> David: My 'mistake' to say that quality is above truth must also be one of
> Robert Pirsig..
> 
> "Plato hadn't tried to destroy aretê. He had encapsulated it; made a
> permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile
> Immortal Truth. He made aretê the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea
> of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that
> had gone before"
> 
> "Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little
> difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting
> the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area
> than in the other."
> 
> 
> 
> Mark:  Yes, good quote.  What we have here are two different ways of being
> aware of reality.  One is through the view of Truth, the other is through
> the view of Quality.  The two are mutually exclusive.  In one case Quality
> is part of Truth, in the other case Truth is part of Quality.  This does
> not mean that one perspective is "above" another perspective.  Since both
> Truth and Quality are different perspectives, what is lost is a
> perspective, not a hierarchy.  Hope this makes sense in terms of my
> statement of your "mistake".

It does make your views clearer thank you.  However, I still disagree with you.  Truth is always part of Quality and not the other way around.   Truth is high quality intellectual patterns.  Truths which aren't valuable don't exist.  

> Mark: No I am not saying that.  You are creating a relative truth, which
> does not make sense.  If truth is relative, it is no longer truth, it is
> opinion.  If truth is the constant process of comparison, then the whole
> meaning of the word changes.  What differentiates truth from opinion?  Does
> this make sense?

What differentiates truth from 'opinion' is this:

There is no truth which isn't someone's opinion.  Anyone who claims otherwise suffers from the incorrect assumption that there is a whole world 'out there' which exists independently of the people who speak about it.   

Here is a quote from Pirsig who describes this mistake in more detail:

"..materialist assumption that there is a huge world out there that has nothing to do with people. The MOQ says that is a high quality assumption, within limits. One of its limits is that without humans to make it that assumption cannot be made. It is a human specific assumption. Strictly speaking, Anders has never heard of or ever will hear of anything that isn’t human specific."

All ideas are opinions.  We can rank these opinions based on how good they are.  The higher quality an idea is, the more true it is.  A high quality idea(truth) explains our experience beautifully. 

> David:  Is truth (high quality intellectual patterns) whatever I want it to
> be?  Is quality whatever I want it to be?
> 
> Mark:  By your logic that is what results.

Quality is not whatever I want it to be.  Everyone knows what's quality from the moment they're born - including you.  I know that you would like to ignore this and place truth first or above it but this is SOM and is not using the beauty of the MOQ.   

Let me try and give an example..  

If I say, for instance, that it's quality to murder someone.  This is clearly not a good thing. In fact, such an intuitively bad thing is explained beautifully by the MOQ, why it is so bad.  It says that someone who murders is evil.  The reason why they're evil, is because they favour the biological act of killing someone over the social pattern of using the legal system to find justice.  This is what I mean by a true idea being beautiful.  The MOQ can explain metaphysically why we experience 'badness' when we think of murder.  SOM doesn't get anywhere close.

> 
> Mark previously: Quality is not above Truth.  This would be like saying a
> red car is above a car.
> 
> From ZMM:
> 
> "Plato hadn't tried to destroy aretê. He had encapsulated it; made a
> permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile
> Immortal Truth. He made aretê the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea
> of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that
> had gone before"
> 
> "Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little
> difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting
> the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area
> than in the other."
> 
> In a metaphysical sense, Quality ought to be above truth. This isn't how it
> is with SOM.   SOM places truth first and doesn't understand Quality. This
> is because Quality is fundamental, not truth.  This is the mistake of SOM
> to always put truth first.  That's not the best way of seeing things.  The
> best way of seeing things is with Quality above all else.
> 
> 
> 
> Mark:  I can agree with you so long as what you are saying is that the
> paradigm based on Quality is better than the paradigm based on Truth.

As stated earlier, they aren't in opposition.  Quality is before truth metaphysically.  In this way, truth is high quality ideas.

> BTW: SOM can work both ways.  You are presenting a Quality paradigm through
> SOM so others can understand it.  

Disagree.  SOM places truth before quality and thus creates Quality as the ghost of reason.   

> SOM is a tool required for conversation
> since we need to objectify before we can exchange.  We cannot exchange the
> subjective.  If SOM claims that it is not putting truth first, then we can
> understand that even though it is claiming that such "not putting truth
> first" is a true statement.

You're caught in a SOM paradox of your own making.  In fact you still use the terms 'subjective' and 'objective' like you are seeing things from a SOM perspective.    In the MOQ, the subjective is social and intellectual values.  Objective is biological and inorganic values.  We are no longer searching for 'objective' truths.  We can exchange the subjective in the same way we are discussing the MOQ right now.  These are our subjective values which we are 'exchanging' now.  I hope that both of us exchange only what's valuable and discard that which isn't...

> David:  If you refuse to see Quality as the source of all things as you
> appear to do, then yes it would appear that I'm talking a paradox.
> 
> Mark:  Yes, here you are talking about faith, and I have no problem with
> that.  You have faith that Quality is the source of all things.  

I am not talking about faith.  Quality isn't something you believe in it's something you experience.  If you do not think that you experience quality then that is a very stange position to take while valuing the MOQ.  I do not 'have faith' that Quality is the source of all things.  I experience DQ as the source of all things.  It explains my experience beautifully to say so. 

> However,
> this would separate us from Quality, which I do not think is the best way
> in which to understand Quality.  Since this is what you are doing, I do
> have issue with that.  It creates a temporal distinction within the instant
> which everything is taking place.  It would be similar to the idea that in
> the beginning God put everything in place and the rest is simply
> mechanical.  This is not what MOQ is for.  It is not a determinist
> philosophy where free will is nonexistent, imo.

The MOQ is not determinist because at the most fundamental level, DQ exists.  All of our words and descriptions ruin this ultimately undefined nature of reality, yet, at the same time they come from it as well…

"Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can be described is a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the definitions emerge, they are static patterns and no longer apply to Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts it."

In this way, the MOQ is far removed from determinism. As no matter what exists, it will always be able to get better by responding to DQ.

> Mark: What you seem to be saying (in my interpretation), is that Quality
> expresses itself in relative terms.  That is, a metaphysics based on
> Quality relies on relativism.  I do not think this is correct, but I do not
> want to open that can of worms again.

Yes, you can get stuck in relativism if you do not place Quality before truth.

> Mark:  Yes, however it seems to me that what you are saying is that such
> "knowing" is based on relativism; That: the only manner in which to become
> aware of a Quality paradigm is through comparison.  To make it worse, such
> comparison is in continual flux depending on the idea at the time.  This
> does not lend any ground for Quality since it could change in appearance
> depending on how we are looking at it.  Because of this, Quality would
> become whatever we think it is.

Quality is not 'whatever we think it is'. 

> Mark:  I have no time for hard, painful work; all my time is taken up by
> the fun.  Life it too short…

If you don't suffer then you can't become a better person and my talking with you now is fruitless..   Throwing our deeply held thoughts about things into question is painful.  The only way we can ever become better people is by throwing these thoughts into question… Philosophy is hard work.. If you don't feel that way, then I wonder if you actually do philosophy at all… 

-David.