Squad
The new program will be no 6, voting results are at the bottom.
In LILA (chapter 12) Pirsig writes:
"If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics- Inorganic, Biological,
Social, and Intellectual- nothing is left out. No "thing," that is. Only
Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any encyclopedia, is absent."
However, without the "encyclopedia" Pirsig speculates over in the above
quote, assigning specific patterns to one of the various levels is often
nothing more than a guessing game. In some cases, two levels may appear to
lay claim to the same pattern. And often a given moral situation seems to
allow for various interpretations of how the levels may be applied. This
problem often creates a "post-hoc MoQ" in which the levels are applied only
to justify some preordained conclusion.
If one grants to the MoQ everything it claims for itself it should function
as both a metaphysical description of reality and framework for deducing the
"solutions" to problems of value and morality. LILA gives us plenty of
information on how the levels (and DQ) should interact with each other but
its descriptions of the contents of each respective level are at best vague.
Most importantly, the MoQ doesn't even claim to give a method of "deducing"
what patterns fit where. But, without this ability the MoQ can never fulfill
either of its two primary functions.. After all, the MoQ can have no value
in moral or metaphysical thought if the thinker must always check with
Robert M. Pirsig to know if he's correctly applying the levels..
I propose that this month we scan LILA for clues and share our ideas on
whether assigning patterns to levels is an 'art' or a 'science'. and if
there's no such 'science', does this leave the MoQ open to charges of being
nothing but an elaborately veiled emotivism?
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12 votes rc'd
2 - Hamish, Gem7th, Marco
3 - JoVo, Mark, Horse
4 - Miv, Simon K
6 - Lloyd, Rick, Brandy, 3wd
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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