[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Krimel:
You see no distinction being made between gut instincts and pre-intellectual awareness. That's the problem. You're equating the pre-conceptual with with instincts and primitive forms of cognition. 


Krimel replied:
I said, "The dynamic aspect of Quality is entirely irrational BECAUSE it is prior to reflective thought." Maybe in this case I should say, "Instincts and primitive forms of cognition are entirely irrational BECAUSE they are prior to reflective thought."


dmb says:
Slow down and look at what you're saying. You are obliviously blowing right past the problem. This problem can be highlighted by simply condensing your sentence a little bit; "primitive forms of cognition are entirely ...prior to reflective thought". See the problem there? The term "cognition" is defined as "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". That means that you just said, in effect, that "thought is prior to thought". As I keep trying to explain, you're misusing the operative terms and your assertions will continue to be nonsensical until that basic mistake gets corrected. I can see that you don't understand the terms you're using. That's why I'm ALSO trying to tell you what these terms actually do mean.

Horse, meet water. Water, this is a horse. I think his name is thirsty.

Bad concepts and primitive concepts are not prior to concepts. (As was recently pointed out in the Journal, "DUH!") They're just low quality concepts, half baked, rudimentary. That's a good way to talk about infants and animals perhaps, but not mystics. You're trying to equate the MOQ's pre-conceptual experience with dark animal urges, with the blood soaked tooth and claw underbelly of nature's cruelty, and if we don't equate this with DQ, you figure, the MOQ must be some saccharine-sweet vision. Krimel, I see what you're doing and please believe me. That's just really bad and confused. It's just you being mixed up, half-baked and grandiose all the same time. Again, this does not make you look very pretty and dealing with an oblivious franken-ego like yours takes even more of the fun out of it. 

In the MOQ, biological responses to Quality are not intellectual, obviously. That's what the title character shows us so clearly. But being Dynamic and on the cutting edge of experience is hardly the same as getting drunk and being a slut. Dancing to disco is NOT what we mean by a "pre-intellectual experience". This biological stuff is simply NOT what we mean by "pre-intellectual". Social level responses involve all kind of cognitions and ideas and so they are also not intellectual in terms of the static levels. But this is also NOT what we mean by "pre-intellectual". Even with very basic animal cognition there are still shapes and forms and pattens and so this is also NOT what we mean by Dynamic Quality and NOT what we mean by the term "pre-conceptual experience". By your reckoning, I suppose, everything except reflective philosophers are pre-intellectual. Again, all this is a result of blathering on and on about a term that you do not understand. It's amazing to me that none of these explanations have gotten through to you yet. Again, I did offer further explanation of this point already, Krimel, so that you could see the distinction between gut-intuitions and scientific intuitions....

Krimel replied:
At best you have stated the obvious that heart burn and hunches are not the same. What you have failed to address is why you think they do not share the common property of irrationality.

dmb says:
As I see it, you have just evaded the explanations offers with a snide dismissal. You have not engaged, addressed, questioned or challenged any part of the corrections offered. This dismissal is then followed by a question that vaguely challenges an assertion I never made. I see that as an intentionally oblivious and obstinate dismissal followed a the propping up of yet another of your many straw men. What could be further away from an honest and intelligent reply? Why do I think that heart burn and hunches don't share the common property of irrationality? Uh, I don't recall any such thought ever crossing my mind and I certainly never said anything like that either, so what the hell are you talking about? Who ever said that? Nobody. You just like to make stuff up when you feel cornered, apparently. 



dmb said (for at least the third time!):
 "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 in a mathematician and the gut feelings of a Nazi."  ...We see how the hippies confused DQ with biological quality, etc.. [Which is similar to your confusion, Krimel, wherein the dark instincts and irrational urges in a quasi-Freudian sense are equated with DQ.]  


Krimel replied:
The question was for you to present a reason why they should not be used as descriptions of the dynamic aspect of Quality. Judging from your response you may have missed the question so let me state it again. Why do you think certain words like irrational should be omitted from our descriptions of the dynamic aspect of Quality?

dmb says:
Why not use the word? Simply because the term "irrational" conveys the wrong meaning and distorts the idea. I'm not denying the existence of dark instincts or primitive cognitions, I'm simply pointing out that this is NOT what DQ means. As I've tried to explain, this dark stuff fits into the MOQ but it's certainly NOT there at the top or at the center of things, as DQ certainly is. The dark stuff you're talking about   is very limited biological responses to Quality, not Quality itself. Intellectual intuitions are not dark and lusty but they're still intuitions. Social values are quite opposed to the dark and lusty but those gut-feelings aren't supposed to be equated with DQ either. I just can't tell you how many different ways your proposition fits badly or fails altogether.

If you alter the meaning of the MOQ 's central term like that, you're not talking about Pirsig's work anymore. (Not to mention how obnoxiously presumptuous it is that you think you can tweak THE central term.) If we use the term as a substitute or alternative to the terms Pirsig actually does use, it won't topple the MOQ. No. If we put the term "irrational" in the place that you're suggesting, then we won't be talking about the MOQ anymore at all. It would be the MOK or the MOC or something, which seems to be full of contradictory nonsense. I'm not interested in talking about that.
   
dmb said previously:
Look, as I've been saying all along, you are misusing all of the MOQ's most basic terms. "DQ" is definitely one of them. I tried to showed you, through a comparative analysis of the various terms used for "DQ", that we can discern the shape of this thing, we can see what Northrop, James and Pirsig are referring to. Your comments about "DQ" bear no resemblance to the meaning of those various terms. So, at this point, you are no position to critique that term. That comparative analysis, apparently, didn't register, didn't mean anything to you. If you can't grasp the basic meaning of the term, then everything you say about "DQ" [and the MOQ] will just continue to be nonsensical. 


Krimel replied:
You keep repeating these example of what you say that MoQers are allowed to say about DQ. But you don't even seem to understand what they mean. Just two examples ought to do but if you have counter examples please present them. Whitehead calls it a "dim apprehension of we know not what." [...] Or Northrop's "aesthetic continuum." You seem to think that "continuum" only stretches from a smile to a smirk.  I want to know why you think it does not include horror, fear and despair. Are these not irrational? How do you justify this?

dmb says:
I have no idea what are you talking about? Whitehead's and Northrop's terms are supposed to be examples of what? 

You want to know why I think the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" does not include horror, fear and despair? Um, because those are differentiations and the continuum in question is undifferentiated. You DO understand what "un" means, right? It's much like the words "not" and "non". So your question reduces to, "Why do you think the pre-conceptual excludes concepts?" Again, because you're misunderstanding the terms, your comments and questions are contradictory nonsense. This is not mere insult, dude, I'm working my ass of over here trying to show you exactly why you are producing so much nonsense. 

 
Krimel quoted Nietzsche:
"Chaos not in the sense that it lacks necessity, but rather in the sense that it lacks order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever
else our aesthetic anthropomorphisms might say. As judged by our reason, the unlucky casts of the dice are by far the rule, the exceptions are not the secret purpose." I added, "My problem with your approach is that it focuses entirely on the 'lucky casts.'" Since you ignored this I said, " I hope that having corrected your misunderstanding about Nietzsche's use of the term "chaos." Perhaps you could explain why, in Nietzsche's sense, chaos is not a legitimate term to use in a description of the dynamic aspect of Quality?"

dmb says:
I ignored it because it's just another straw man. My approach focuses on the lucky casts? I have no idea what you are talking about. The thing you're calling my approach is just more stuff you made up. 

Actually, it's worse than that. For the third time I'm telling that my complaints about your usage of "chaos" is all about misusing the scientific versions of that term. The quote you offer as a correction - hilariously - shows Nietzsche using the term just as Pirsig used it, which is the common meaning that I insisted on and you denied. "Chaos ..in the sense that it lacks order". That's what you get when you neglect static patterns, chaos, a lack of order.

Having said that, however, I see this as another smokescreen. It's just another way to avoid taking my corrections seriously. It's another way to weasel out of the comparative analysis of the term in dispute. You're just side-stepping the main dispute, which is nothing less the meaning of the MOQ's central term! Your repeated dismissal of such a clear, clean and brief presentation is really quite dishonest and contemptible. Your only defense has been school yard taunting on a par with, "you're not the boss of me".

And your main objection is a totally implausible personal attack. You keep rejecting it on the pretense that the analysis amounts to me trying to gain a monopoly on the meaning. But think about. The comparative analysis in question gathers the terms from at least four separate thinkers who were working independently of each other; Northrop, Poincare, James and Pirsig. Think about it for just a second. If there are four guys using the term interchangeably, how could that be a MONOpoly of any kind, much less MY monopoly. This is the whole point of the comparison, in fact, to show that it's NOT just my idea. The analysis shows that these terms are public property among philosophers and I don't get to decide what they mean any more than you do. As I see it, your refusal to take this analysis seriously says nothing about the analysis but it says loads about you - and none of it is good.   


I'm telling you, it looks real bad. Maybe you just don't care. Maybe it's the secret goal in some mind-game you're playing with me. But with each exchange I lose more and more respect. I'm trying to be polite about it with my complaints couched in terms like "nonsense" and "contradictory nonsense" but you can probably tell that I have much stronger terms in mind. This is not my way of saying that I don't like you. It really just means that your ideas and sentences don't make sense. It's based purely on the stupid things you say about the MOQ in this forum. Period. End of story. If you want me to think that you're hopelessly and irretrievably lost, just keep cranking this kind of nonsense. If that's what you're shooting for, well, it's working out great so far. You're right on track and ahead of schedule.