LS MOQ in 25 minutes

From: Kevin Sanchez (wisdom@world-net.net)
Date: Mon Mar 29 1999 - 16:43:24 BST


[MODERATOR'S NOTE: I originally bounced this message back, as I was not sure it addressed this month's topic, but am forwarding it now with Kevin's new explanatory note. Cheers, Keith]

>Dear Keith:
>
>I fully respect your decision, but I disagree, and must ask you to
>reconsider. The topic was how to explain the Metaphysics of Quality within
>45 minutes. Although I frame the lecture differently from others on the
>Lila Squad and indeed Pirsig himself, I still believe that presenting MOQ
>in terms of a clash between modernism and postmodernism provides greater
>understanding to the listener. Modernity represented objectivity,
>postmodernity subjectivity, and Pirsig the bridge between the two. I do see
>how one could at first glance see this lecture as off-topic, but if one
>reads further, I think it explains Metaphysics of Quality quite well - and
>in less than 45 minutes. Thus I wish you would post my comments, and allow
>debate to continue on this topic until the end of April.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Kevin Sanchez

{This paper actually took me only 25 minutes to read aloud. I truncated it
because time stole my life at a rapidly belligerent rate. If any can steal
some time back from time, I would appreciate some commentary on how I
framed the discussion and how I explained the topics covered. Thank you for
reading (if you do, that is).}

                                ß

Humanity faces an existential crisis.

When the sunrise of the Reniassance ended the Dark Ages, humanity began to
deeply value the search for wisdom. From then onward, reason seemed the
proper guide of our collective path. A philosophy labeled "modernity"
started to dominate our intellectual thought, which encompasses great
philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, and
Bertrand Russell. From this normative perspective, humanism, rationality,
and progress seemed the instruments to construct utopia. And for the
briefest of moments, the Hegelian Absolute lay just around the bend - the
road to perfection so real and so beautiful.

All that's gone now. Our view of the world took a different turn. Looking
back, we found that the search for wisdom failed us. Deifying Reason didn't
make humanity a bit more reasonable. With all our democracy, irrational
wars and bigoted violence still ensue and on a greater scale. With all our
science, unpreventable deaths still occur and on a greater scale. With all
our progress, poverty still afflicts the oppressed underclass and on a
greater scale. And with humanism came a whole new bag of calamities -
technology which may dehumanize us, environmental destruction which may
obliterate us, and a degradation of the human spirit which may steal our
very reason for living. And these catastrophic diasters still continue to
teem and fester. Right now, this very instant, they perpetuate themselves
in vicious cycles pushing us to the brink of extinction.

In these times, uncertainty has overcome us. We have asked questions of
modernity that it has been unable to answer. A philosophy labeled
"postmodernity" has begun. Instead of a savior, its merely a vacuum.
(Indeed "postmodernity" doesn't even characterize itself as anything other
than something which comes after or "post" modernity.) From this
descriptive perspective, humanism, rationality, and progress seemed
instruments to construct disutopia - and postmodernity's duty is to
deconstruct both the instruments and the normative goal of "utopia."
Postmodernity encompasses philosophers such as Fredreick Nietzsche, Martin
Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sarte, and Michel Foucault.

While modernity holds that morality is universal, postmodernity holds that
morality is singular (or non-existant). While modernity says that insofar
as reason discovers truth, we can dictate a universal morality,
postmodernity says insofar as societies and individuals differ, so too do
morals.

The intellectual conundrum of our century has been choosing between these
two impotent interpretations. The moderns have been unable to prove
universality while the postmoderns have been so successful in proving
singularity that they have left us without any usable morality whatsoever.

The postmoderns have won; no trumpets should sound. For what is the meaning
of anything if anything goes? Wouldn't the totalitarian society in Orwell's
1984 be a totally moral society by postmodernity's rationale? Honest
postmoderns would say, "Yes. Life has no meaning and Orwell's disutopia is
as good as any." (But usually most postmoderns aren't honest and revert to
looking in weird places to find dubious morals. This contributes to the
intellectual confusion of our times.) Postmodernity fails to center itself
and simply revolves around diametrically opposing modernity. If the moderns
say "the individual is paramount," the postmoderns fire back with "the
group is paramount." Moderns say "progress," postmoderns say
"de-development." Moderns say "science," postmoderns say "technophobia."
And when the postmoderns critique they win because they bear no burden of
defending an alternate morality. Since postmodernity rejects morality, it
can't replace any of the structures it topples. It resembles Satan in
Arthur Miller's play "The Creation of the World" - postmodernity is the
Supreme Critic which can't provide any constructive alternative.
Postmoderns critique for critique's sake and when questioned about the
morality of critiquing they either evade or honestly state, "There is no
morality." To which one could ask, "Then why the hell ought you critique at
all?" To which they would probably reply, "Because I like to." And there
lies the heart of postmodernism - all morality devalues to mere preference,
relying on particular taste, nothing more.

All this may appear to be an irrelevant esoteric intellectual dog-fight
confined to a small group of old wise men who speak the language of
philosophology. Yet the side we choose in this debate in a very profound
way chooses the meaning we subscribe to everything. From our every-day
decisions to our social advocacies to our relationships - to act and to
interact requires a purpose for action and interaction. Make no mistake,
this debate represents much more than a conflict between abstruse bookworms
but strikes at the heart of our very purpose for existing. We would
probably rather ignore this controversy, placing a quick, sloppy retort on
it and leaving it behind so we may return to more important affairs. But
this dialogue calls into question the very significance of all so-called
"important affairs." Why should even we punch in for work tomorrow if we
aren't working for anything valuable other than a societal preference? With
postmodernity's triumph, we are left without a purpose, without meaning to
our lives, to our society, to anything that exists. Very literally, we
stand demoralized. Why should we detest murder, pursue love, pay bills, and
so forth, if we cannot decide why?

And therein lies postmodernity's trump card - moderns cannot successfully
win the "why game." Put another way, all knowledge seems infinitely
regressive. Nearly every child plays this game, but the stakes raise in
philosophy. If you say Nazi death camps were immoral, and I ask why, and
you reply because they killed people, and I ask why is that bad, and you
say because killing people is wrong, and I ask why . . . well, you get the
idea. Just before we start reverting to knuckles on lips to resolve the
"why game," we reach a point where logic becomes circular. At that point
the moderns must defend an unwarranted assumption which postmoderns can
critique.

Gloriously, postmodernity has not convinced the masses . . . yet. But when
the masses awaken to find modernity a flimsy and imaginary construction,
they will kick it down just like postmodern intellectuals. Even though the
intellectual decontruction of modernity has not yet occurred on a massive
scale, it certainty has begun psychologically and culturally. Increases in
crime and suicides, in disunity and divorce, losses in civility and
community, etc., definitely illustrate that many people are searching for a
reason to live and sometimes finding it in harmful places. Both innocuous,
amoral intellectuals and intolerant, rabid fundamentalist vie for power
over people's passive minds. While caught in the trap of this existential
war, it appears modernity isn't right and postmodernity isn't good. Thus
every person must choose between the Good of modernity and the Right of
postmodernity - between modernity's lie and postmodernity's nihilism. Yet
when the Good conflicts with the Right, don't we all lose?

                                ß

Enter a man riding a motorcycle named Robert M Pirsig. He realizes a simple
truth - before we can answer the questions of "what is good?" or "what is
right?", we must first answer the question of "what is real?" To use the
intellectual terminology - before we apply axiology or epistemology, we
must first delineate metaphysics. For, simply enough, if we mal-delineate
metaphysics, we misapply axiology and epistemology. The reason moderns
cannot answer the "why game" - and the reason postmoderns get away with
proving that all knowledge is infinitely regressive - is because almost no
one bothered to ask, "What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge?" or if
you prefer, "What is real?"

Except Pirsig - who wrote two books on these matters, Zen & The Art of
Motorcycle Maintaince and Lila. I intend to use Lila to demonstrate his
philosophy which he calls the Metaphysics of Quality. Of course, you don't
even have to read Lila to understand the Metaphyics of Quality - just look
at the outside of the book for a second or two. You will notice the book
has certain qualities - color: green, shape: rectangular, weight: light,
taste: bookish, touch: smooth, and so on. Now the million dollar question:
where are these qualities? Although it seems like an easy question, its
been quite perplexing for centuries. Philosophy presents us with only two
options: the book or the observer.

The qualities can't be in the book because different observers will give
different accounts of the qualities in the book. A color blind person might
say the book is actually red, and if he and I were the only two people in
existence, which one would be right? As John Locke pointed out if we ask
what a thing is outside of the qualities we percieve, we find ourselves
talking about nothing.

All right, you say, since different observers see things differently, the
qualities must be in the observer. Yet the qualities can't be in the mind
of the observer because the observer can't perceive these qualities in the
absence of the book. Contemporaries of John Locke much enjoyed
hypothesizing about a person who can't percieve any qualities - no sense of
touch, taste, smell, sight, or hearing. In this hypothetical too, we find
ourselves talking about no one.

When presented with these two options, Pirsig's method is simple: create a
third option. Pirsig's answer to this riddle would probably read something
like this: since the qualities cannot exist without the book and cannot
exist without the observer, they are the results of the union between the
book and the observer, of the object and the subject. We cannot say with
certainty that, "The observer sees a green book" because we can't
certaintly define the observer or the book (except as a sum total of
certain qualities). Yet we can with absolutely certainty say, "The color
green is being seen." Indeed this provides a certain foundation for
knowledge - qualities exists and are begin experienced. To put into
Pirsig's terminology, we only need singularize and capitalize the word
"qualities" to "Quality." Since we can't separate the union between the
subject and the object, we can unify all qualities into one Quality.
Therefore, Quality is the ultimate and certain foundation for all
knowledge.

Yet Quality is neither an object like a book or a subject like an observer.
Rather Quality is an unifying event - when the subject becomes aware of the
object, the Quality Event occurs. The unification of subject and object or
the Quality Event creates both the subject and object. Only because of the
existence of the union can separations exist. Only out of Quality can
qualities come forth. Since everything consists of nothing but qualities,
Quality creates everything. And therein lies the humanity's rub - we tried
to find reality in a preposterous separation of the subject and the object
when reality exists in the union between the subject and the object, in
Quality. With this realization, Pirsig began the Metaphysics of Quality.

The false duality of subjects and objects brillianltly illustrates the war
between modernity and postmodernity. Modernity subsribes to objectivity -
the idea that an objective reality exists even without our perceptions of
reality. To moderns, this reality is universal and provides a basis for
morals. Thus, the book creates reality. Postmodernity subsribes to
subjectivity - the idea that an objective reality doesn't exist and our
perceptions define reality. To postmoderns, this reality is merely singular
and as such, provides no basis for moral judgements. Thus, the observer
creates reality. Neither grasps the undivided reality of Quality. But once
the postmoderns proved that no objective knowledge exists, the moderns
could never prove morality existed.

Robert Pirisig unites these two feeble philosophies by realizing they're
both wrong. The crux of the problem resides in that both moderns and
postmoderns see good as an abstraction, not a concrete reality - as a
adjective and not a noun. The moderns have been forced to admit that
morality is subjectively defined because they can't prove that objects
create morality for subjects to live by. After all what are "objects" to
moderns except a swirl of subatomic particles. How can an atom tell a human
how to act morally? This foolishness is not often examined because nearly
no modern stopped to consider the metaphysical implication to his or her
pontificating rhetoric about axiology. The postmoderns simply called the
modern's bluff. But the postmoderns still accept the duality of a
subject-object metaphysics. Since the objective approach provides only
baloney, they tried the subjective approach which provides no morality
whatsoever. Anything a subject prefers is all right with postmoderns.
Moderns couldn't prove that subjectivity wasn't true; they could only reply
that it wasn't good. And so the subject-object duality created a choice
between the Good and the Right.

Pirsig's escape route is to crush this condundum. He collapses the
subject-object duality and thereby gives us the opportunity to choose both
the Good and the Right simultaneously. How? Good is a noun, not an
adjective. Value isn't just something subjects use to choose between
objects; value creates both subjects and objects.
Graphically represented:

Subject-Object Metaphysics
                                                           Reality
                                                       / \
                                               Subjects Objects
                                                  /
                                           Values

Metaphysics of Quality

                                                     Value (Reality)
                                                      / \
                                               Subjects Objects

As Pirisig writes in Lila, "The Metaphysics of Quality says that if moral
judgements are essentially assertions of value and if value is the
fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgements are the
fundamental ground-stuff of the world." (p180)

Yet immediately the moderns and the postmoderns may question Metaphysics of
Quality's subjectivity: "If this vague concept of Quality is so unified and
constant, why is it so variable? Why do people have different opinions
about it? Why should we prefer it to postmodernism when its just as
subjective?"

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintaince, Pirsig leaves Quality alone.
He decides that we can't define Quality even though we can deduce its
existence. In his inquiry into values, this deduction satisfies Pirsig and
he simply louges in the ambiguous mysticism he created. But Pirsig is
foremost an intellectual, not a mystic, and he can't let Quality go
completely undefined. In his inquiry into morals, he quests to better
define Quality. Seven-teen years after he published his first tome, Pirsig
must make his first division into his previously undivided Quality.

Pirisig divides Quality into two subcategories - Dynamic Quality and static
quality. In short, Freedom and order. Pirsig writes a more comprehendsive
description in Lila:

"Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the
source of all things, completely simple and always news. . . Its only
percieved good is freedom and its only precieved evil is static quality
itself - any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and
kill the ongoing free force of life. Static quality . . . is old and
complex. It always contains a component of memory. Good is conformity to an
established pattern of fixed values and value objects." (p133)

We can better describe the history of the universe, of biological
evolution, of human society, of philosophy, and indeed of reality itself as
a continuous conflict between static and Dynamic Quality. Put another way,
neither static or Dynamic Quality can exist without the other because they
balance reality between them. Freedom without order produces chaos. Order
without freedom produces death. Too much Dynamic change maintains nothing;
too much static conformity creates nothing. Progress occurs because of a
balance between the maintenance of order and the creation of freedom -
between preservation of the static and production of the Dynamic. While
these two forces seem at war, they actually work together in striving for
betterment, in furthering the evolution toward perfection.

Pirsig's new dictnomy explains why Quality varies from person to person and
from society to society. As Pirsig wrote in his paper entitled "Subjects,
Objects, Data, and Values" submitted to the Einstein Meets Magritte
Conference in Brussels:

"[A]lthough Dynamic Quality is a constant, . . . static patterns are
different for everyone because each person has a different static pattern
life history. Both the Dynamic Quality and the static patterns influence .
. . final judgment. That is why there is *some* uniformity among individual
value judgements but not *complete* uniformity." (Emphasis original)

Although we cannot define Dynamic Quality (we can only deduce its existence
through logic and experience), we can with great precision define static
quality. Pirsig in fact categories static quality into levels based upon
the amount of Dynamic Quality found within a particular type of static
quality. Sounds complicated, but a simple graph more lucidly describes this
heirarchy of static patterns.

<Insert Figure 4 from Pirsig's "Subjects, Objects, Data, and Values"
lecture.>

Pirsig writes in Lila that we may see the evolution of reality as the
"migration of static patterns toward Dynamic Quality." (p167) In moving
toward more freedom, all things create order to prevent degredation. For
example, a constantly mutating organism will not long survive, but if the
organism occasionally makes dynamic advances while consistently latching
itself to a static form, it will both grow and survive. We can thus view
our path toward perfection as a process of static latches and dynamic
advances. For example, a culture has periods of radicalism followed by
periods of traditionalism, which people rebel against by beginning a period
of radicalism, which people denounce by beginning a period of
traditionalism. A healthy culture constantly imporves - too much tradition
stops progression, too much radicalism causes regression.

Pirsig then defines four fundamental static latches (or levels) which
quality uses to maintain stability while producing growth:
The evolution of reality begins at the inorganic level. Whether our
opinions drift toward the Big Bang theory or some other hypothesis on the
universe's creation, we must admit that the building blocks of our universe
remain subatomic particles. Pirsig labels these particles "inorganic
patterns of value." At the inorganic level, strong static laws dominate -
the laws of gravity, space-time, thermodynamics, and so forth. Although
this strict static order prevents much change on the inorganic level, it
provides a stable foundation on which to stack other levels.

{I ran short of time, but I intended to explain each static level and
during the interim explain how the Metaphysics of Quality explains many of
our intellectual platypi better than subject-object metaphysics. To
summarize, in the inorganic level, I intended to explain the substance and
causation platypi. In the biological level, I would explain the life-being
Pirsig describes when copulating with Lila. In the social level, I would
explain the socialization of infants into subject-object reality, "the
Giant" as Pirsig defines the societal being, the value of contrarians,
Pirsig's view of sanity and insanity, and address the issue of governance.
In the intellectual level, I would explain the theory of multiple truths in
Quality, the scientific reality platypi, the mind versus matter platypi,
the free will versus determinism platypi, and the unity between art and
science.}

                                ß

So where's the morality? There exists more than one morality; indeed each
level holds its own moral system. On the inorganic level, the laws of
nature rule; on the biological level, the laws of the jungle rule; on the
social level, the law and mores rules; on the intellectual level, the law
of reasion rules. But above all these remains Dynamic Quality. Thus, Pirsig
write in Lila, "In general, given a choice of two courses to follow and all
other things being equal, that choice which is more Dynamic, that is, at a
higher level of evolution, is more moral." This tenet represents a
universal and incontradictable morality. Of course, we may differ as to
what choice presents the most dynamic path, we finally can agree on a
central value.

This solves the paradox of our century by presenting humanity with the
Right Good. No longer need postmoderns and moderns roar in battle, no
longer need we allow our differences to wreck havoc on our world, no longer
need we invent false gods or revert to nihilistic cynicism. A moral path
now lays before us - all we need do - follow it.

{Horrible ending - forgive me . . . and damn time!}

MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org



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