[MD] Intellectual Discussion and Dialectic - Finding agreement, Quality and beauty in the world.

[david buchanan]

David H said:
I think above all else Marsha values DQ.  DQ is also outside of intellectual value and logic.



Arlo replied:
I think this is generous, but wrong. For two main reasons. First, "dynamic quality" is the source of intellectual quality. It is not an "either/or" option, it is not "intellectual quality OR dynamic quality",... Being coherent is not in opposition to DQ, any more than being harmonious is something musicians should deliberately avoid just because its 'a static pattern'.

Second, there a hundreds of more "DQish" forums around the internet, from Zen lists to lists about poetry and art...  As I said, Marsha is here for social quality, and I include under that umbrella the psycho-egotistical roleplay that she gets out of 'being Lila'. I've already mentioned the baiting and evidence of attention seeking in the increased frequency of "I define..." posts. Do you think that is following Dynamic Quality? If she genuinely was pursuing "DQ" this forum wouldn't even make its way into her awareness,.. To join a philosophy forum to tell everyone that philosophy is pedantic is rather arrogant and, from the MOQ's perspective, stuck in an SOM view of intellectual quality.


dmb says:
You know what's funny about Marsha's anti-intellectualism? It's based on her misunderstanding of the MOQ's central distinction, based on her inability to see the difference between concepts and reality, between static quality and Dynamic Quality. She confuses and conflates the two in various ways, with the contradictory description of static patterns as "ever-changing" being an often-repeated example. Because DQ cannot be defined, she incompetently figures, definitions can't be defined either. If it's immoral to lower DQ down to the static intellectual level, she badly reasons, then talking intellectually about intellectual patterns must be immoral too. Each of her anti-intellectual assertions is predicated on this same basic confusion. If you can discern the pattern here, you can see this error proliferate like a cancer through the whole body of the MOQ. It's a tremendously bad idea. It undermines the MOQ in exactly the same way as Bo's equation (SOM=intellect), only more so because of her treatment of DQ as something opposed to intellect, rather than integrated.

What Marsha doesn't get is that "Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable," as Pirsig says, but "metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics". Quality is reality but metaphysics is just a bunch of static concepts. Marsha uses the fact that "Quality is essentially outside definition" to assert that are static concepts are also outside of definition, which is a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity because definitions are concepts and concepts are really concepts unless you can define them. Somehow Marsha thinks that a philosophical discussion about a philosophical writings is equivalent to defining the undefinable, is the same as talking about "the scientific nature of mystic understanding" or like trying to define the mystic reality itself.  


Since "the creation of any metaphysics is an immoral act since it's a lower form of evolution, intellect, trying to devour a higher mystic one," she badly reasons, it's also wrong when philosophers gather to discuss  philosophy. Since metaphysics is immoral "when it tries to devour the world intellectually," her hair-brained reasoning goes, amateur philosophers are immoral in their attempts to capture the intellectual quality within a set of static patterns too. In short, she treats the prohibitions against defining Dynamic Quality (reality) as if they applied to static quality as well. The absurd conclusion is that it is immoral to define concepts. The ridiculous conclusion is that definitions cannot be defined and it is degenerate to try.  







Arlo said to David H:
... Compare the 'rhetoric' between Marsha and DMB. DMB attacks incoherence (whether or not you agree with his manners), whereas Marsha attacks philosophy itself. DMB attacks contradictions, Marsha attacks DMB for talking about James or pragmatism or, basically, for what she miscontrues as 'philosophology'. DMB is trying to strengthen the intellectual level, Marsha is trying to destroy the intellectual level. When you look beyond their heated choices of words, that is the pattern that comes out time and time again.


dmb says:
Exactly. And that rhetorical dance is directly related to Marsha's perception of criticism as bullying or as academic elitism and my perception of her anti-intellectualism as a bogus and irresponsible evasion tactic. Even further, I think it's no accident that Marsha's apathy and hostility toward intellectual values is in direct proportion to her intellectual incompetence. This stance would be much less hypocritical and absurd, as we both keep saying, except that Pirsig did write his metaphysics (without defining the undefinable) and she takes this stance in a philosophical discussion group. She has joined a club only to insult and denigrate its reason for being. Other than the quotes she posts (but does not understand), her contributions have no intellectual merit and almost always distract from the posts that do offer something worthy. I think she's deeply in the red.