[MD] DQ/sq as WATER/ice

[david buchanan]

Dan said to Marsha:

I guess I don't see where you're going with this. Water isn't distinct from ice. Water IS ice. It is simply in a solid state rather than a liquid. Inorganic patterns like water change structure according to the ambient surroundings. Think iron: its melting point is much higher than water. But it is still iron in either state.
On the other hand, static quality is distinct from Dynamic Quality by definition. Static quality emerges from Dynamic Quality. To say 'the fundamental nature of static quality is Dynamic Quality' seems confusing rather than enlightening, in my opinion. Isn't the fundamental nature of static quality its definition?


dmb says:
That's right. I think Lucy is use of the McGilchrist quote only undermines the MOQ's central distinction. "Crazy" is such a strong word. Let's just say she's conceptually promiscuous. It's so fuzzy you can't really make anything out AND it invites an all-too-easy materialistic misinterpretation of the static/Dynamic split, wherein metaphysical terms are inappropriately used to describe physical states. You can see very common error in David Morey's response to that quote...


David Morey said:
I love this quote. And it is when we experience changes like ice changing to water then it becomes pretty clear what DQ is all about, and that water is more dynamic than ice, and that is more static than water. ...


dmb says:
Water and ice are okay as analogies, maybe. But if static quality is everything in the encyclopedia and both of them (water and ice) are definable and both of them are included in the encyclopedia, then they're both static in the MOQ's sense of the word. Pirsig says that Dynamic Quality is the cutting of experience and static quality is conceptual, ideas, abstractions, thoughts, the products of reflection, etc.. I don't see how it could make any sense to say that water is the cutting edge of experience or how it could make any sense to say that ice is a product of reflection. I mean, this is a matter of confusing the metaphysics of substance with the metaphysics of Quality.

 




"Water is distinct from ice, but in the ice cube it is present: not as a fly might be trapped there, but _in the very ice_.  And yet when the ice cube is gone, the water remains.  Although we see water as ice, we do so not because it is there separately, to be seen from behind or apart from the cube." (Iain McGilchrist, 'The MASTER and his EMISSARY: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World', p. 452).