[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[david buchanan]

dmb said:

...We don't need it [the term "irrational"] because the terms Pirsig uses are just fine but they don't carry the same negative baggage. "Irrational" would be a bad substitute. ...I mean, unless the purpose is to be pejorative, use of the term "irrational" in relation to "Quality" or "Dynamic Quality" just shows bad rhetorical taste. It's the wrong word in the sense that it's a bad artistic choice.


Dan replied:
I pretty much go along with this. What I think may have a bit of merit is irrationality as intuition, what we might call gut feeling. Searching Lila I could find no reference to intuitive thinking other than a short paragraph pertaining to Dusenberry. In ZMM, intuition is linked to 'grooving on it' and immediate perception, to the romantic mode:  ...Maybe that's why Robert Pirsig doesn't go into it much at all in Lila.   I don't think we can properly say intuition is pre-intellectual awareness yet it might be some of the first patterns to emerge. Inspiration and art are not rational and yet they aren't entirely irrational either. Rather, there is an intuitive quality which emerges from experience that has little to do with intellectual patterns, or classical ideas.

dmb says:
Right, intuition doesn't come up in Lila because, I think, because in ZAMM it was so directly connected to the romantic style of thought and that's why he ditches the classic-romantic distinction. In Lila he switches to the static-Dynamic instead, of course, and there we can see that romantic thinking is still thinking and shouldn't be confused with pre-conceptual or pre-intellectual awareness. Classic and romantic refer to different ways of thinking - wherein those with a classic temperament love Aristotelian details and those with a romantic temperament prefer Platonic wholes. Dynamic Quality is neither because it's prior to reflective thought and so cannot be a thought style of any kind. And yet the patient on the table is still analysis itself, reason itself, and Pirsig's expansion of rationality is accomplished by putting DQ at the center of our thinking, even at the center of the scientific process itself. We can see this in both books but in Lila, where we see that gut feelings might just be a biological response, Pirsig is more precise about the difference between gut instincts and pre-intellectual awareness.

In LILA Pirsig wrote: "The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns. But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one-is another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method. Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." 

Similarly, In ZAMM Pirsig wrote: "I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice."

Krimel's use of "irrational" confuses pre-intellectual awareness (Quality or Dynamic) with instincts and primitive forms of cognition. There is a vast distance between Krimel's claims to be improving the MOQ and his ability to comprehend the basics of the MOQ. He's trying to bridge that gap with snark, egotism and an unrealistic (i.e. delusional) sense of his own capacities. 


Dan said to dmb:
.... I guess what I am getting at is: if we are relegated to only groping static quality patterns, how do we go about growing the MOQ? Are we doomed to continually repeat the same old mantras until we grow tired and give up? Perhaps this is where an intuitive take on the MOQ may be of value. I don't mean wallowing in irrational nonsense but rather recognizing there is more to the MOQ (and elephants) than just static patterns.


[snip supporting quote from ZMM: "...Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? ... This was the beginning of the crystallization..." [ZMM]

Dan continued:
What he seems to be saying is that rationality only goes so far. If new ideas and inspirations are to be given a chance to crystallize, perhaps intuition is better than rationalization. Maybe there are times when the rational solution simply will not work, no matter how carefully one plans their days and spends their nights laying out metaphysics and picking up bar ladies and rubbing elephants on their fat old behinds.

dmb says:
That's a good point but I'd add a qualification, one that's very important, I think. The growth of new ideas and the moments of inspiration we want almost never happens in the absence of static patterns. It's not enough all by itself but you gotta have that first. They call it a necessary but insufficient condition of growth. That's what I saying about Lila's problem the other day; she lacks the stability needed to contain her freedom, she's extremely degenerate in the Pirsigian sense and in the common sense too, I suppose. Or consider all the training and hard work Poincare had under his belt before he could intuit the mathematical solution in a flash of insight. This is what Pirsig says about the Zen monks too, how the Dynamic is found right in the midst or their static rituals, and he even describes this in terms of trying to "perfect" those patterns. The classroom scenes in ZAMM, where your supporting comes from, illustrate this point too. After they had become convinced that Quality is real and they could recognize it even if they couldn't define it,  then the standard texts came into their own, he says. Now they we're just a bunch of disconnected, arbitrary rules. The were tools and guides to help you achieve quality in thought and speech. With undefined Quality at the center, even though it remains undefined, the static patterns themselves are transformed from obstacle to aid and are thereby redeemed. I think this is a very, very important point. Clinging to DQ all by itself is a foolproof recipe for chaos.



Dan said:
Yes, Lila is primarily a rational novel delineating the MOQ in a conceptual classical mode. ZMM, on the other hand, pays homage to the intuitive romantic mode which has been abandoned in Lila. I understand the 'why' behind this yet it seems as if something of value has been lost in the translation.

dmb says:
I think the revision in Lila only sharpens and clarifies what he was saying in ZAMM. The language of the second book is more technical and less literary though, so it certainly feels less groovy. Plus New England and sail boats are kinda posh where motorcycles and Montana are earthy and gritty. But he never really romanticized the romantics. You know, his artist friend couldn't sculpt a back yard grill or fix a short in his light switch. His drinking buddy, the drummer, could not fix his own motorcycle. There is something wrong with our technological world, he says, but running from technology is not the solution. The solution is to see that technology is not some evil death force but a fusion of nature and the human spirit. -- And of course these lessons in motorcycle maintenance are a miniature study in the art of rationality itself, he says. So rationality - or static intellectual quality - has always been the focus of Pirsig's attention, regardless of which book we're talking about. His root expansion of rationality is achieved by putting undefined Quality or DQ at the center of his metaphysics but that is the goal and the MOQ itself, as opposed to the DQ it talks about and centers around, is static and intellectual, conceptual and definable, as any metaphysical system must be. 

I think vague notions like intuition, inspiration, grooviness can be clarified by the MOQ as we get it in the second book. The levels of static quality sharpen the distinction between, say, the gut feelings of certainty a mathematician and the gut feelings of a Nazi. We see how the hippies confused DQ with biological quality, etc.. And these levels of static quality - in relation to DQ - is what constitutes the self and the whole defined world. Every last bit of it. Only DQ is left out of that defined static world. I would NOT defend the "classic" mode per se, but the conceptual mode, the intellectual quality mode? Oh, hell yes. I think "Perfection" is the most unrealistic word in the english language but I really am convinced that inspiration and insight are the rewards of effort, come directly out of the work that it takes to get it right, to get it down. I think this is what the MOQ says and I think this holds true with math, motorcycles or just about anything else, including the MOQ itself.



Dan said:
The way I understand it, Dynamic Quality becomes synonymous with experience... This seems to be a hang-up for a number of folk here who claim we experience static quality. No, we don't experience static quality. Rather, static quality emerges from experience.   So if we do not experience static quality, do we experience Dynamic Quality? No, not if Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous. Again, this is not a proper question to be asking within the framework of the MOQ. Rather, all these concepts, including the term 'experience,' emerge from Dynamic Quality, which itself is an intellectual term to point to that which lies beyond definition.



dmb says:
You and Dave have been going around and around about that for quite a while now, eh? Can't say I've followed every twist and turn but it's pretty clear that "experience" is main the point of contention. There are some very good reasons to be careful in using that word around here. I guess you know why such caution is advised; because "experience" means one thing under SOM and something completely different in the MOQ. What's more, the MOQ's pre-intellectual experience or pure experience is not the only kind of experience. Once that gets cleared up, I suspect, the rest of your dispute with Dave will sort itself out. 

Let's say we've already ditched the SOM version of "experience" wherein the subject perceives and then conceives the  objective realities that were already out there independently of the subject. So we're NOT talking about experience on that model. (Krimel needs to hear that even if you don't, Dan.) This dualism says that subjects and objects are required for there to be any experience at all. Subjects and objects are the pre-conditions that make experience possible.

The MOQ rejects that model of experience and instead begins with a very different conception of experience. With this new starting point, "experience" takes on a whole new meaning and now the word is being used here in a very special sense of the word. We're talking about DQ as pure experience itself, the cutting edge of experience, so out front that it is prior to concepts. Think of the DQ/sq distinction as a line between two phases or moments in an overall process. Think of them as two parts, both playing a role in the same process. In that sense, they are both included within our overall experience. The primary empirical reality is experience prior to concepts but then, very quickly and automatically, concepts are added and give shape to the immediate experience. We experience the whole thing and they're constantly working together so seamlessly that we can hardly tell one from the other. 

The same sort of issue comes up around the James quote that Pirsig uses, wherein "there must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality". People mistakenly read that to mean that concepts are not real or are not part of reality. But here "reality" refers to that same pre-conceptual experience, which is the starting point of reality in the MOQ and in radical empiricism. It wouldn't be too far wrong to simply rephrase it as something like, "there must always be a discrepancy between pre-conceptua experience and conceptual experience". Or you could say DQ is undivided and unsorted experience just as if comes - before it is mixed with our trainload of conceptual additives.