Hi dmb,

If you and Andre didn't misrepresent and misquote, you'd have nothing to post.  And your modus operandi seems to require someone to oppose.  Also, as Andre accused me of never having a decent discussion, I would like to ask him to point to a decent discussion that he's had, or you for that matter.  My statement "Static patterns of value are processes, conditionally co-dependent, impermanent, ever-changing and conceptualized, that pragmatically tend to persist and change within a stable, predictable pattern." is consistent.  To restructure the statement into the phrase 'ever-changing patterns' was sleazy.  To replace my use of the word 'relative' with 'relativism' was a misrepresentation.  You seem to demand strict adherence to dictionary definitions only when it suits you.  When I asked for the definition of 'relativism' you made one up to suit your purpose.  When, again, asked by another poster to present the definition of 'relativism' that you were using, you declined to do so.  

Find a topic that interests you and present it...  


Marsha




On Jan 23, 2012, at 12:07 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan@hotm...> wrote:

>
> "Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity. But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of.Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life." (RMP - Lila.)
>
>
> "The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called "Quality" in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.     Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics. 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, Lila)
>
>
> dmb says:
> These two passages are consistent with each other and they both say quite a lot about the distinction between DQ and sq.
>
> You may have noticed that Andre and I (and others) have been complaining about the way Marsha confuses this distinction, "the first cut" of Phaedrus's analytic knife.
>
> Writing a metaphysics of Quality is degenerate BECAUSE metaphysics has to be intellectual and static but the mystic reality (DQ) is neither static nor intellectual. DQ is the primary empirical reality that all of our static concepts have to answer to. Another way to say it is that intellectual static quality (abstract concepts) always follows from, are derived from and are secondary to pre-intellectual experience (DQ). The MOQ is, strictly speaking, a matter of bringing DQ, the primary reality, down to the the level of secondary abstractions and derived concepts. Actually, it's not as bad as all that. DQ remains undefined and the MOQ is a bunch of ideas arranged around that mystic focal point. About the focal point itself, we don't say much and when it is talked about it's usually in terms of what DQ ain't. It ain't static and it ain't intellectual but that's exactly what metaphysics must be. And there is nothing inherently degenerate about intellectual patterns of quality. The problem arises when we abuse the abstracting function, when we make ideas more real or more important than the reality they come from. This is, strictly speaking, a matter of breaking the highest moral code. Words cheapen it. It really does feel kinda sleazy even now.
>
> Those who confuse these things might come to the absurd conclusion that the MOQ is outside of thought and language, that words can't be defined and ideas have no particular meaning. The MOQ is given to us in two published books and it's filled to brim with thoughts and ideas and words with particular meanings and definitions. The mystic reality it talks about is not given to us in any book, especially not the ones that say otherwise.
>
>
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