[MD] contradiction

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
Contradiction is a dis-ease only if one assumes that it is not the immediate events and situations that are real but the isolated abstractions.  That is why I think of _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed but not necessarily real or true.)

dmb says:
No. Of all the mistakes you've made, this one is among the most ill-conceived and consequential. I can see a straight line that directly from this assertion to your vacuous nihilism and relativism. And, as I've been trying to explain for years, it is predicated on a misunderstanding of the MOQ's first and most basic distinction. In a nutshell, you're saying that contradictions don't matter unless you think that static patterns or abstractions are necessarily true or real. That is terribly confused. 

Contradiction is a conceptual error. Contradiction (like logical coherence) is not something that can be applied to immediate experience precisely because immediate experience (DQ) is pre-conceptual. Because contradiction is a conceptual error, it makes no sense to say that pre-conceptual experience is contradictory or coherent. Contradiction can only be applied to static patterns, particularly intellectual static patterns, but which I simply mean words, ideas, concepts, abstractions and the like. This application does NOT depend on a belief that static patterns are necessarily true or real or anything like that. Contradiction and coherence are words used to describe the clash or harmony of ideas in relation to each other. One can see that it is contradictory to say "a unicorn has two horns" regardless of whether one thinks unicorns are real, for example. One could insist that it is wrong to say "2+2=2" regardless of whether one is a Platonist about numbers or not. In short, the logical relations between words and concepts does NOT depend on any kind of metaphysical realism or any particular ontology. The logical relations between concepts and ideas only matter when one wishes to make sense and otherwise communicate with other people. In this context, the MOQ discussion group, that's all that is ever asked of anyone. That's all you get. Words and concepts. Keyboards and computer screens. One cannot meditate in an email exchange. By necessity, talking about metaphysics is all about the conceptual.

If you think contradictions don't matter, then you have no sense of intellectual quality. If you think contradictions are only a disease that affect the other guy, then you are intellectually nowhere. In that case, you're just not capable of playing the game at all. 

"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.     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 must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." (Lila)

"Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them."  (ZAMM, Emphasis is Pirsig's.)

Pirsig says in chapter 8 of Lila: "The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The MOQ satisfies these."


Contradictory nonsense is to intellectual quality as injury and disease are to biological quality. It's exactly what you DON'T want.