Hi David, Thanks for your response. I have cleaned this thread up a bit and addressed a couple of your points.
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 4:23 AM, David Harding . There are no 'rules' here. There's just what's good and its good to say that truth is high quality intellectual patterns. Mark: We get into an interesting situation here if this is what is said. Yes, "we all know what is good", we can say there is truth to such a statement. If however we relegate truth to high quality patterns and say that such a depiction is good we end up with a paradox. There is no way to separate truth from good, or Truth from Quality. They become exactly the same thing. The solution is to say that , "yes, they are exactly the same thing". In this way the dichotomy presented by Pirsig is a false one. He creates an enemy of truth, and does not replace it with anything different. I have no problem with this result, since it is we who create distinctions where no distinctions exist. Such distinctions are made simply for rhetorical purposes and fall apart on logical examination. David: Right. I agree - its not an academic exercise. Everyone knows what's good from the moment they're born. Quality isn't nothing for me. Quality is before me and you and everyone and everything else. Mark: "Everybody knows what is good" is a statement of truth. If such statement is simply a qualitative judgment then "knowing what is good" becomes relative and implies that some people know good better than others which contradicts the very pronouncement itself. In saying that “Quality is before me and you”, You are projecting the concept of Quality being before the concept. This is of course traditional in many religions. It creates a source for our concedptualization of a source. It is much easier to say that we are Quality rather than speculate that it exists before us. The world unfolds at every instant. It is not segregated into a preliminary phase followed by our phase. There is no time for that to happen. We do not exist one step removed from Quality because if so, then you have created two different universes, and one is sufficient for MOQ. David: What makes the MOQ a good idea is how it represents experience beautifully. Mark: Yes, this is a good statement, but cannot be stated categorically or the "goodness" disappears, and we are left with a fact. Facts have no place in Quality for they represent Truth coming before quality. But, I know what you mean. It is a different way of lo0oking at reality. David: My 'mistake' to say that quality is above truth must also be one of Robert Pirsig.. "Plato hadn't tried to destroy aretê. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He made aretê the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone before" "Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other." Mark: Yes, good quote. What we have here are two different ways of being aware of reality. One is through the view of Truth, the other is through the view of Quality. The two are mutually exclusive. In one case Quality is part of Truth, in the other case Truth is part of Quality. This does not mean that one perspective is "above" another perspective. Since both Truth and Quality are different perspectives, what is lost is a perspective, not a hierarchy. Hope this makes sense in terms of my statement of your "mistake". > Mark: > What are you talking about "changing the value of truth"? Truth is truth. > Are you saying that one truth is better than another in some kind of > absolute sense? How can you say that I am changing the value of truth, > when it is you who are saying that truth is a good idea? Your truth is not > truth at all, your truth is relative, which makes it conditional. You > sound like a lawyer, saying "if this truth is good, then that truth is > not". Truth is truth, how do you go about comparing them? David: You go about comparing them based on how good they are. Are you saying you don't really know what's good? If so, that's a strange position to take. Mark: No I am not saying that. You are creating a relative truth, which does not make sense. If truth is relative, it is no longer truth, it is opinion. If truth is the constant process of comparison, then the whole meaning of the word changes. What differentiates truth from opinion? Does this make sense? David: Is truth (high quality intellectual patterns) whatever I want it to be? Is quality whatever I want it to be? Mark: By your logic that is what results. Mark previously: Quality is not above Truth. This would be like saying a red car is above a car. >From ZMM: "Plato hadn't tried to destroy aretê. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He made aretê the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone before" "Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other." In a metaphysical sense, Quality ought to be above truth. This isn't how it is with SOM. SOM places truth first and doesn't understand Quality. This is because Quality is fundamental, not truth. This is the mistake of SOM to always put truth first. That's not the best way of seeing things. The best way of seeing things is with Quality above all else. Mark: I can agree with you so long as what you are saying is that the paradigm based on Quality is better than the paradigm based on Truth. BTW: SOM can work both ways. You are presenting a Quality paradigm through SOM so others can understand it. SOM is a tool required for conversation since we need to objectify before we can exchange. We cannot exchange the subjective. If SOM claims that it is not putting truth first, then we can understand that even though it is claiming that such "not putting truth first" is a true statement. David: If you refuse to see Quality as the source of all things as you appear to do, then yes it would appear that I'm talking a paradox. Mark: Yes, here you are talking about faith, and I have no problem with that. You have faith that Quality is the source of all things. However, this would separate us from Quality, which I do not think is the best way in which to understand Quality. Since this is what you are doing, I do have issue with that. It creates a temporal distinction within the instant which everything is taking place. It would be similar to the idea that in the beginning God put everything in place and the rest is simply mechanical. This is not what MOQ is for. It is not a determinist philosophy where free will is nonexistent, imo. > What are you talking about "haunting SOM"? David: It was to Plato. He didn't like it. To repeat - "Quality had been forced under" - it had become the ghost of reason… Mark: OK, thanks for the explanation of "haunts". > Mark previously: NO, ranking is not imperative in MOQ, that would make it relativism. David: When there is more than one static quality they can always be made 'relative' to one another and compared and ranked based on how good (evolved) they are. This does not make quality itself 'relative'. Quality is fundamental. How can I 'prove' it? I can't. Any truth accepted 'proof' comes after quality not before it.. The only way you can 'prove' Quality is by showing the harmony it produces. Mark: What you seem to be saying (in my interpretation), is that Quality expresses itself in relative terms. That is, a metaphysics based on Quality relies on relativism. I do not think this is correct, but I do not want to open that can of worms again. David: Everyone knows what quality is. Quality is not relative. The reason why we use different words to describe what quality is depends on our experience. If we had the same or similar experience then the words we use to describe quality would be the same or similar. Quality is fundamental and not relative. Mark: Yes, however it seems to me that what you are saying is that such "knowing" is based on relativism; That: the only manner in which to become aware of a Quality paradigm is through comparison. To make it worse, such comparison is in continual flux depending on the idea at the time. This does not lend any ground for Quality since it could change in appearance depending on how we are looking at it. Because of this, Quality would become whatever we think it is. David: I hope that you value what I write and try and understand where I am coming from as I extend this same courtesy to you. Mark: Yes, I do value this discussion and have learned a lot from it. I will try to keep my attempts at humor at a minimum. > If these discussions are not fun, then why have them, right? Well, one could argue that we still should have them regardless of if they're fun because they make us better people. Becoming a better person isn't always fun. It's hard, painful work. Mark: I have no time for hard, painful work; all my time is taken up by the fun. Life it too short… Cheers, Mark. 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