Doug Renselle (renselle@on-net.net)
Sun, 18 Jan 1998 20:08:16 +0100
Diana and TLS,
See my comments below:
Diana McPartlin wrote:
>
> Doug, Platt and the LS
>
> How 'bout this
>
> Quality
> 1. Quality is reality. Quality is the ethical principle of the Good.
> Thus reality is a moral order. Quality, like reality, is known to us
> as
> awareness. As such it is impossible to define.
>
Diana,
This is VERY GOOD, IMhO.
As devil's advocate though, how do you define awareness? If you mean
co-awareness, it is a good principle. If you mean unidirectional
SOM-awareness, it is less good.
>From our perspective we see (are aware of) the edge of Quality or the
face/surface of it. This is our SOM-based unidirectional awareness of
Quality. But Quality sees (is aware of) all of us too. We are IN IT
AND IT is IN us... Capra in 'The Tao of Physics,' calls this
"interpenetration."
I think Pirsig's section in 'Lila' on mirrors is relevant here. (I
didn't review this, so I am operating on recall.) What I mean is that
we are defined, to a lesser or greater degree, by what the other
constituents of Quality think we are, given their co-awareness of us.
As an example Diana, you are partially defined by TLS' co-awareness of
you. That is the case for each of us.
Doug Renselle.
> The Metaphysics of Quality
> 2. The MoQ is the intellectual path to enlightenment. It is the nature
> of the intellect to define things. Thus the purpose of the MoQ is to
> define reality. The MoQ pursues the intellect so that the intellect
> may
> be transcended.
>
Diana,
Topic line is EXCELLENT.
I am coming around more and more to your view that we should just use
the first lines (topic lines) of each Principle as The Principle and do
more discussion elsewhere, because the added sentences tend to muddle
the pristineness of the topic lines.
Also, is it "the" path, or "an intellectual path?"
Doug.
> > Doug wrote:
> >
> > > If you read Pirsig very carefully he is saying that, "...we know
> what
> > > Quality is AND we don't know what Quality is..." For me, this is
> the
> > > MoQ Uncertainty Principle! This is a key concept to the
> evolutionary
> > > stability of MoQ, IMhO.
> > >
> > > Pirsig, I believe, is telling us that we can define Quality AND we
> > > cannot define Quality. In ZMM, he admits that this is a
> contradiction.
> > > But it is only a contradiction if you are loyal to SOM. In the
> new way
> > > of thinking, we admit the existence of uncertainty in everything.
> It is
> > > there. We cannot do anything about it. So we integrate it into
> our
> > > philosophy.
> > >
> > > For me, the Principles are almost there, except for this one
> thing.
>
> I'm not sure if we're looking at same aspects of the same thing but
> here's my interpretation of the contradiction inherent in the
> MOQ.Pirsig
> says that we know what Quality is. We all know, we've known all our
> lives -- to exist is to know what Quality is (need we ask anyone to
> tell
> us these things?). The problem is that Quality is a mystic concept and
> it can't be contained in an intellectual concept, ie a definition.
> Okay,
> so we've been over that before.
>
> But the crazy thing about the MoQ is that, even though it admits that
> we
> can't define Quality, it _is_ actually an attempt to define Quality.
>
> So the dilemma isn't that we can and can't define. It's that we can't
> but we try anyway.
>
> Pirsig admits right at the start that the MoQ won't work. His
> justification for doing it is "aw go ahead anyway". Not very
> scientific
> maybe, but what he is saying is that he can't help himself. It's his
> nature to be intellectual. Telling Robert M Pirsig not to define
> something is like telling a fat man to stay out of the fridge. The
> subject-object metaphysics doesn't give much credit to reasoning like
> this. It would say if you know with absolute certainty that you can't
> do
> something then you should give up. But Eastern mysticism doesn't find
> anything wrong at all. "Let everything be allowed to do what it
> naturally does, so that it's nature will be satisfied," says the
> Taoist
> Chuang-tzu. "In order to contract a thing, one should surely expand it
> first, " says Lao Tzu. (Both from Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics chap
> 8)
>
> The MoQ says that reality cannot be defined, but the purpose of the
> MoQ
> is to define reality. This is the inherent contradiction in it, and
> yes
> that should probably be made more explicit. But there's nothing
> uncertain about it. We will always know what Quality is, we will never
> define it precisely, we will always try and define it. Those are all
> certainties.
>
Diana,
This is fine work. I read this over and over. But each iteration I
came closer and closer to the position that this work argues FOR the MoQ
Uncertainty Principle, (MoQUP). Let me see if I can explain why:
Diana, you say in the last paragraph above, "But there's nothing
uncertain about it. We will always know what Quality is, we will never
define it precisely, we will always try and define it. Those are all
certainties."
"But there's nothing uncertain about it."
I think this sentence is wrong. Quality is intrinsically uncertain and
certain - that's its nature.
"We will always know what Quality is,"
I think MoQ says we can know the face/surface of Quality, but we can
never know its whole. Therefore Quality is certain and uncertain. This
is the MoQUP.
Doug Renselle.
> >From Chap 5
> "Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition
> and
> since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a
> Metaphysics of Quality is essentially a contradiction in terms, a
> logical absurdity"
>
> -- Pirsig isn't saying that we can and can't define Quality. He's
> saying
> that we can't, plain and simple, we can't.
>
Diana,
Yes! Because the whole of the DQ division is undefinable. Its
face/surface is definable by our awareness of it as you eloquently say
above.
Doug Renselle.
> The only sense in which we *can* define quality, is that we can say
> some
> things about it. Quality is sort of like this and kinda like that, we
> can make vague statements, define aspects of it and give examples, but
> that's all.
>
> The sense in which we *can't* is that we can't get it precisely right,
> because we don't have the words.
>
Diana,
Yes. Again, we cannot see the whole.
Doug Renselle.
> This is not the same as the both/and nature of reality that is
> demonstrated in the wave-particle nature of light. Light is not sort
> of
> kinda something like a wave, but if we are being precise we would say
> it's a particle. It is absolutely a wave and absolutely a particle.
> This
> is a completely different paradigm from the can/can't define Quality
> one.
>
Diana,
Ah, but it is! In fact, the wave IS the FACE of the whole! Be careful
with the SOM-term "absolute."
Diana, each of your careful analyses, IMhO, supports the need for the
MoQUP as part of the Principles.
The MoQUP shall allow us, as practitioners of MoQ, to confront the
archetypal platypus without rejecting it as impossible, incapable of
fitting our philosophy, just because it violates the static part of what
we already believe.
The MoQUP allows our Principles for Pirsig's MoQ to do what he wants:
survive! The absence of the MoQUP puts TLS' list of principles in that
mundane category of theories which fail to practice an ESS, or
Evolutionarily Stable Strategy. The MoQUP allows our Principles to
evolve and grow. The MoQUP admits the finite intellect of the
Principles' proponents.
Please push back.
Mtty, Diana, and all of this wonderful TLS,
Doug Renselle.
> Last sentence
> "Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or
> anything else definable, but if you had to reduce the whole
> Metaphysics
> to Quality to a single sentence, that would be it."
>
> In other words, we can't get it precisely right, but this is the best
> we
> can do.
>
> Diana
>
-- "The cause of our current social crises,..., is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself."By Robert M. Pirsig, in 'Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' p. 102 (paperback), Bantam, 28th edition, May 1982.
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