From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon May 16 2005 - 03:13:49 BST
Mark, Matt and all MOQ "purists":
msh said:
Matt, I don't think your claim is stupid. David might, but it
sounds like you and he have been battling it out for years, so I'll
let you work on it for yourselves. I just think you're giving the
word "Quality" a lot more mystical weight than I do, or need to.
dmb adds:
Maybe I just give up on the idea of actually criticizing Matt's assertions
and positions. Maybe I should just write, "that's stupid" after each post or
each paragraph. The effect would be the same because Matt has a habit of
complaining about the criticism rather than bothering to address it. I tend
to say a little more than just, "that's stupid" for the sake of whatever
reader might be interested, I guess.
msh continued:
My personal and pragmatic interpretation of the MOQ relies on a pair
of what I claim to be two empirically verifiable statements:
"Evolution occurs" and "Some things serve evolution better than
others." From these, I can derive the moral hierarchy, and that's
all I need. As I've said many times, I DON'T think that Quality is
literally the source of subjects and objects, and don't even
understand what that would mean.
dmb says:
I was in that same place. Its good enough for all practical purposes. Its
the static side of things, the side of conventional realities, but I also
have to insist that there is more to the MOQ. Ask Paul Turner about Quality
as the source of subjects and objects. He explained it to me. Ask Ant. He
wrote the book. I don't expect you to take my word for it, but I think
philosophical mysticism is well worth discovering and exploring.
msh said:
.......................It was only AFTER Pirsig had arrived at his
notion of Quality that he picked up Tao Te Ching and was blown away
by the perfect comparison. He and Lao Tzu had arrived at the same
place via different routes. So, a person can believe in the Dao
without having read Lao Tzu, just as a person can believe in Quality
without having read Pirsig.
dmb says:
Maybe it would help to motivate you to explore the less conventional side of
things if I told you that the agreement between Taoism and the MOQ wouldn't
surprize a philosophical mystic. One of the features of this view is that
lots of people have "seen" what Phaedrus and Lao Tzu saw, that a version of
this "truth" exists in every culture and is and the heart of all the world's
great religious. Its really quite magnificent, the way it flowers everywhere
and yet is always hidden.
In other words, philosophical mysticism really embraces the idea of multiple
truths. It doesn't say this or that revelation or depiction is the only
correct one, but instead looks at them like works of art. And one of the
advantages of this pluralistic perspective is that is decreases one's desire
to nuke the other guy.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon May 16 2005 - 03:20:48 BST