From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Tue May 10 2005 - 19:43:38 BST
Hello Mark! I've been following the MD for a couple of weeks, and the
worries you've expressed here are so at odds with my understanding of
the MOQ that I can't resist jumping into the discussion here.
Hopefully I can give some reassurance!
> My real bother about the understanding I've developed - and I add
> again that I'm in no way sure that it's correct - is that it makes the
> MOQ a profoundly depressing, disempowering, hopeless viewpoint. I
> presume that the MOQ doesn't apply to forms of quality which are
> already directly understood, such as the "quality" of a
> multiple-choice exam answer sheet as calculated by comparing given
> answers with a set of predetermined correct ones.
The MOQ applies to everything! The quality of a particular answer in
the kind of exam you describe is static, and falls into the
intellectual level, as do all patterns that relate to truth or
falsity. The MOQ does apply to "forms of quality which are already
directly understood" (i.e. objects or subjects of any kind, anywhere):
it calls them static patterns of quality.
> So the implication would be that it's necessary to nail down the
> "quality" of things into concrete physical terms and, if you can't do
> so, then the quality is dissociated from anything that you can affect
> and all you can do is hope. So for instance, you can study for your
> multiple-choice exam, but there's no point practicing writing essays
> or music - that's metaphysical quality, so no matter how you practice,
> it's beyond your powers to exert even a slight influence on the
> quality of the output!
When you speak of "nailing down" quality into "concrete physical
terms", you are suggesting that quality must be objective in order for
us to be able to manipulate it. If this were possible, then quality
could be understood and manipulated by intellect, just as we use
intellect in mathematics to manipulate numbers. Philosophers have been
trying for centuries to do this "nailing down" of values into facts.
If this interests you, you might want to investigate the ethical
theories of Kant or the Utilitarians, or some theories of aesthetics
(I don't know of any examples).
The examples you give of essays and music, the value of which are
often deemed to be subjective and therefore unknowable, are the kind
of cases where the MOQ comes into its own. In fact Pirsig uses them
both as examples in either ZMM or Lila. For the essays, I'll direct
you to the chapters in ZMM describing Phaedrus as an English teacher
and his early discoveries about Quality. It's worth getting familiar
with, because it's a fundamental part in the genesis of the MOQ, and
Pirsig explains far better than I could.
This paragraph was going to be an explanation of Quality as it relates
to music, but I found that I'm not so confident when it comes to
analysing specific examples such as this. It's something I'd like to
discuss, but I don't have any easy answers. Again, I recommend
Pirsig's explanation, this time in Lila, and I really wish his books
had an index so that I could provide page references. let me just say
that I think your problems stem from your description of Quality as
"metaphysical", which I take to mean "non-empirical"/"out of our
reach". To understand the MOQ, you need to see that pure Quality is
rooted in experience. Far from being out of our reach, it confronts us
all our waking life, but is masked by our static intellectual, social
and biological filters, which help to provide the "nailing down" that
you crave. Quality won't be nailed down by anything, and that's how
the MOQ helps our understanding: by leaving Quality undefined.
> I really, really, hope I'm wrong... (errr)
The MOQ doesn't call you "wrong", but it would, I think, ascribe low
quality to your understanding, because it is as you say, "a profoundly
depressing, disempowering, hopeless viewpoint". I also doubt that it
would be particularly useful, so it fails Pirsig's pragmatism too.
Again, I hope this is reassuring in some way, and I'll be happy to
discuss any points that interest you, or any objections!
Regards,
Mike
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