From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Sun Jan 26 2003 - 15:08:41 GMT
Wim, DMB, Platt, and all:
>
> Wim said:
> I think Pirsig isn't making things clearer by talking about
> 'biological/social/intellectual entities. It would be better, I think, to
> stress that thinking in terms of patterns of value is to be distinguished as
> clearly as possible from thinking in terms of subjects and objects. Equating
> objects with inorganic and biological patterns of value and subjects with
> social and intellectual patterns of value (which Pirsig did explicitly in
> his SODV-paper; see on www.moq.org) is only excusable as a crude rule of
> thumb or short introduction to SOM for SO-thinkers. It's a fallacy, I
> believe, to try to categorize 'things' (usually visualized as subject or
> object) as a pattern of value of one of the levels.
>
> DMB says:
> A crude rule of thumb? A fallacy to try to categorize things? Hmmm. I think
> you're making this much more complicated and cumbersome than it needs to be.
> Pirsig includes this "crude rule of thumb" a couple of pages into chapter 24
> of Lila.
>
> Pirsig:
> "The MOQ resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject
> and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system of
> understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are
> social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious universes that
> go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real
> contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary
> relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one."
>
> DMB continues:
> I think this is quite simple and clear. We see here that subjects and
> objects are not abandoned or thrown out, but are embedded into a larger
> picture. Objects lose their metaphysical bedrock status in this enlarged
> vision, but they certainly don't disappear from the scene. I mean, the
> purpose of the four levels is all about categorizing "things" and
> "entities". Its about making sense of the world we all know and experience
> everyday.
Steve:
Pirsig doesn't help us make sense of the world by merely subdividing
subjects and objects into two new categories for each. Pirsig spends a
great deal of time criticizing subject-object categorizations which won't
improve by adding subdivisions. Pirsig is asking us to make sense of the
world in a new way. What we perceive as individual entities and things and
subject and objects that seem to "have no real contact with one another" are
all participants in broader patterns. It is the patterns that can be
classified into the static levels, not the entities that participate in
uncountable patterns of up to four different types.
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