Hi everyone
Please vote for ONE of the topics below. You may post your votes between now
and midnight GMT 31 March. Please use the same subject line as this post when
you submit your vote.
Two comments
As people are re-suggesting and re-re-suggesting other people's topics it is becoming
extremely cumbersome to note who originally suggested ideas, so I haven't attached
names to them. (And in any case you should vote for the idea not the person.)
I'm not going to allow Jonathan's suggestion to continue the slow reading because
we've already begun planning to move it elsewhere and we can't have it going on in
two places at the same time.
Here are the topics, all 13 of them ....
1)
In the event of an inter-level conflict is it ALWAYS the case that the
higher level of Value, as defined in the MOQ, has moral superiority? Are
there instances where this is not the case and how are they resolved? How is
it possible to recognize and/or resolve an intra-level moral conflict?
2)
Is this static-dynamic split merely an epistemic convenience that we make
arbitrarily or is it an ontological reality, transcending our thoughts and
intellectual description of it?
3)
What would our world look like today if the Sophists had won the debate
over the primacy of Truth over Quality?
4)
Dan Glover has been busy the past few months putting together a book called
'Lila's Child' which chronicles the first months of TLS discussion
group, from August 1997 to April 1998.
The manuscript is now nearing completion and I would like to invite the
focus group to critique 'Lila's Child' chapter by chapter. Specifically
I am looking for suggestions to improve the flow of dialogue and help in
finding any redundancies, misspelling and grammatical errors that I
might have missed.
5)
'Lila' was described in one it's reviews as 'having little to add but more dull taxonomy'. Given
that trying to solve moral dilemmas using MOQ seems to create as much debate and
confusion as not using MOQ and there also seems to be considerable confusion as to the
interpretion of Pirsig's levels, is this a fair criticism?
6)
To further explore the Social and Intelectual Levels in terms of how they work and their
composition. Also, if DNA is the "machine code" or interface between the inorganic and the
biological levels, what form does the interface between the Biological and the Social levels
take and similarly the interface between the Social and the Intellectual levels.
7)
How would Pirsig unite modernity and postmodernity. Chomsky advocates modernity
claiming we need morality to legitimize our actions and justice is the highest ideal of
society. Foucault advocates postmodernity claiming that despite our need of it,
morality doesn't exists and that society defines its highest ideal as it wishes. It seems
Pirsig can't appease the moderns because of his reliance on experience instead of logic and
he can't appease the postmoderns because of his acceptance of a universal morality
instead of particular morality.
8)
Can the MoQ be separated from LILA??? If so, how do we do it?
If not, how can this group ever really achieve anything more substantial
than literary criticism?
9)
i suggest we discuss
the pragmatic implementations
of the metaphysics of quality
in the thinking space
of the social/political
specifically, how does it concieve of and operationalize social agency?
and how does it approach matters of (governmental?) policy?
pirisigs' works have much to contribute to philosophies
of laws, revolution(aries), economics, free will.vs.determinism, etc.
which have tremendous implications for policy-making
let us systematize these meandering (?) political thoughts into one style of
thinking
for example, does a metaphysics of quality believe that the means
justify the ends
or that moral ends require moral means?
(warning: i'm not suggesting specific stances on political matters;
only specific ways of concieving/analyizing/valuing political questions)
10)
"Pirsig refers to Dynamic Quality in a number of different ways in Lila
and his paper Subject, Objects, Data and Value. Is he referring to
the same thing or is it possible that, like Static Quality, Dynamic
Quality consists of distinct or different aspects?"
11)
The last sentence of Chapter 3 reads:
"And as Phaedrus' studies got deeper and deeper he saw that it was to this conflict between European
and Indian values, between freedom and order, that his study should be directed."
Phaedrus seem to be saying that by and large the Europeans valued order more highly than freedom the
Indians the reverse.
Is this an accurate portrayal ? but more importantly just what is freedom? How does the MoQ provide
for it ? How it the same, different, than other philosophies? etc.
in other words......
What are the qualities of freedom?
12)
What has the MOQ got to say about the morality of drug use? When I say
'drug use' I exclude drugs used for purely medical purposes.
13)
I re-suggest the idea that we compare the MOQ to other favorite books of the
members of the Forum. What other sources are out there that support the
metaphysics of Lila? What other authors have already extended the concepts?
I believe this topic could allow us to extend our horizons to myriads of new
but relevant themes. Other philosophers (James, Whitehead, Krishnamurta),
other metaphysics (Deutsche, Wilber), other sociologists, other branches of
science (complexity theory, quantum science).
We could also end the month with a great common recommended reading list.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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