[MD] Replacing SOM

[david buchanan]

Krimel said:
Find me somewhere where Pirsig talks about the downside of DQ. Not just the, "oh my, we need a little SQ to retain some balance." I mean find an instance where he shows an appreciation for how devastating the flip side of DQ is.
OR
Show me something, anything, a single instance of something that is SQless or DQless.
OR
If SQ and DQ are incommensurables how is it, that in experience they are so entwined? How is one to distinguish them? 


Arlo replied to Krimel's first question (about the downside of DQ):
I think there is a misunderstand here. My guess is you're talking about things like hurricanes, and meteors, and cancer, and ice ages, and wars, and famine, and the 'fact' that one the entire cosmos will collapse back into a singularity and all these static patterns will be 'erased', and and stuff like this?   Or, if I am wrong, can you list out some examples of what you consider to be evidence or illustrative of the "downside of DQ"?

dmb says:
Yea, I don't know what Krimel is asking or why he's asking it. Is the "downside of DQ" relevant to the MOQ's rejection of SOM? Or what? If DQ is pre-conceptual experience, in what sense could it be "devastating" on the flip side? I honestly don't know what you're talking about here, Krimel.

I also don't understand the second question, Krimel, wherein you demand an example of perfect purity. Why? Who ever said that either side could be or should be so pure. Are you taking this from James's term for DQ, from his "pure experience"? If so, that is an excessively literalistic misreading of James. His term simply refers to experience prior to conceptualization, it is pure in the sense of being as yet undivided and unsorted into words and concepts. As I understand it, these two elements are always intimately related. DQ is the source and substance of the sq and the sq is good only insofar as it functions in relation to the DQ. As I keep saying, the distinction between these terms is conceptual. It's the first and most basic distinction so you wanna get it right. In that sense, DQ is not sq and sq is not DQ. Period. But this does not entail any claims about how these elements can't interact or relate to each other or that they exist in pure states in isolation from each other, or whatever it is you're imagining. 
In other words, you'e demanding an example that proves an assertion that nobody made. That's what "straw man" means.



Krimel said:
If SQ and DQ are incommensurables how is it, that in experience they are so entwined?


Arlo replied:
Yikes. You're using the terminology, but you're completely in a different ballpark than Pirsig. [snip]...same words but completely different discourse.  For Pirsig, of course, "SQ and DQ" are NOT "entwined" in experience. Experience IS DQ. SQ is what emerges or derives FROM experience. ("Static quality... emerges in the wake of Dynamic Quality." (LILA))[snip]... You are using the terminology so differently, I think it actually hinders rather than enhances your conversations here.
That said, I also think you're using "incommensurable" wrong as well. I take it to mean, anyway, "impossible to compare", and certainly Pirsig spends a great deal of time in LILA "comparing" Dynamic Quality with static quality. And if you are meaning "impossible to measure", that's kind of way off too, since of course we measure static quality all the time, in fact I'd say one could reasonable argue that within the MOQ static quality IS a measurement. But, no, we can't really 'measure' Dynamic Quality, since that would be to 'define' it, and DQ is indefinable.



dmb says:
Yea, that's one of the reasons it's so important to get clear about the meaning of the key terms. Without that, you just can NOT have an intelligible conversation. Without that, you have a foolproof recipe for confusion and frustration. All you're ever gonna get is tall glass of nonsense. This need for basic definitions is not even a philosophical point. It's just common sense. If we each have our own definition of the central terms, moq discuss will continue to be a tower babel. 

That is no small problem. It totally undermines the whole point and purpose of this forum.

It's kinda heart-breaking.