[MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

[Krimel]

dmb,

I used to think talking to you was kind of fun. Like Pirsig I enjoyed your
zingers. But really there needs to be more to a conversation that an
exchange of zingers. I have tried with marginal success to steer my end my
end of the conversation away from merely personal insult and onto the issues
at hand. But what you have presented here is not a response, it is a
childish temper tantrum. It isn't even zingy. 

This is the tactic you have employed on so many others in this forum.
Pretentious screaming that creates a toxic environment for everyone
involved. Maybe I used to have more time to waste on this kind of thing but
that is not the case, at least for the present. I would be perfectly willing
to forget about this post and invite you to reconsider and respond again.
But what you present below is unworthy of you, unworthy of a response and
frankly unworthy of the ideas Pirsig talks about. In fact my recommendation
to Bob would be that he seek some sort of legal injunction to prevent you
from using his name in public.

Again if you or anyone in your fan club or the orthodoxy would care to step
in and help you out that would be great. Ant for example has shown some
interest in the past but frankly your sins extend well beyond what spelling
and style advice can redeem. I quite agreed with Pirsig, Maxwell, Nietzsche,
Husserl, Heidegger and many of the philosophers of the last century that
there needs to be a merger of logic and emotion if we want to cultivate
knowledge and wisdom. However, your rant below is enough to make anyone want
to rethink the prospects for such a merger. You have let emotion overwhelm
reason to the extent that you are reduced to sputtering outrage. I really
don't have time to waste on it. Further conversation along the path you have
taken, would be too much like taunting the retarded kid on the playground.

In closing let me point out that you have been ranting against William
James, your prophet of Pirsig. James' distinction between percepts and
concepts is exactly what I have been speaking about as the rational and
irrational. Once again this comes from "Some Problems in Philosophy" which I
believe is the only work of James that Pirsig actually attempts to quote.
You seem utterly unfamiliar with it. It is a bit long and has some big words
in it so you might also consult James' essay "What is an emotion?" where he
talks about the processes of irrational, perceptual phenomena flowing into
conceptual understanding.

Once again if you can produce something that shows even a minimal
understanding of the issues or if you can call in some back-up to translate
for you, I am open to further discussion. But if this is all you have, I
suggest that you would do yourself, everyone one on this forum and Pirsig a
great service by just keeping quite. 

Krimel


-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of david buchanan
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 2:02 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] The Tao of Quality - Verse 1

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 non  e 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.


 		 	   		  
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