[MD] Where does DQ end and SQ begin and SQ end and DQ begin? It's all bananas isn't it?

[david buchanan]

Marsha axed:
Can you see the world as it comes to be in each moment rather than as what you think?


dmb says:
Huh? 

As I keep saying, you are conflating reality (DQ) and concepts (sq). You're mixing-up the difference between the world (pure experience) and what we think of it (ghosts, analogies, static patterns). One of the problems that results from this basic misconception, apparently, is that you constantly mistake my claims about the MOQ (static patterns) for claims about reality itself. The say that reality (DQ) cannot be defined is to say that we cannot talk about reality. I'm not even trying to talk about reality. I'm always just talking about concepts, the MOQ's concepts in particular. 

Since this is the central distinction in the MOQ, there is shortage of textual evidence to support it. Here's Pirsig saying exactly that in three different ways:

"The Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be separated from the Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the rest of the printed philosophic tradition it doesn't change from day to day, although the world it talks about does."

"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."

" 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality."

This is what Pirsig thinks (and what James thinks). This is what the MOQ says. It doesn't matter how often you dismiss it or weasel out of it or blame it on me. These are Pirsig's words. Deal with it, for a change. Face it, for once. Stop the ridiculous evasions, Lucy, and be honest for a change. You cannot retreat into mysticism every time your claims are challenged. Nobody is forcing you to put claims and assertions into a discussion group. You have to take responsibility for that choice and for your own words.