From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jul 16 2005 - 17:02:33 BST
Bo,
Bo said:
I don't have ZMM with me here, but there is one sentence ending ....until
this time there had not been any subjects or objects, mind or matter ...etc.
Matt:
Ya' know, Bo, you mention this "one sentence" a lot. I would think you'd
want to look it up at some point.
As it happens, this one sentence upon which so much of your interpretation
seems to hang was brought out and interpreted in my piece that I'm now
positive you didn't read (else you wouldn't have said, peering off into the
distance of your memory, "there is this one sentence...somewhere"). While
writing the piece, I stumbled upon it and discovered what might be to my
mind the most ambiguous single paragraph in Pirsig (and that's coming from
someone who thinks Pirsig is overall pretty ambiguous). I took some time
and care to interpret it.
Here's your sentence: "What is essential to understand at this point is that
until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object,
form and substance." (ZMM, 382, 25th an. ed.)
Sound's like mind/matter, subject/object were created by the Greeks, don't
it? But here's the sentence directly afterward: "Those divisions are just
dialectical inventions that came later."
"Came later." That throws a wrench in the easy meaning of your one
sentence. I think you have some more interpretive work to do. You might
start with countering my own interpretation (Part I to Part III, on June
29).
Bo said:
No need to create differences where there none are. "Appearance/reality" is
another S/O facet, most like Aristotles' "form/substance", I can't imagine
myself ever rebutting that.
Matt:
Too bad you didn't read my argument, or else you wouldn't have obliviously
oblitered the nuance I created between S/O and A/R. Part of my argument is
that they are different, as of course you acknowledge when you say that A/R
is a facet of S/O. However, it is my argument that A) Pirsig doesn't think
A/R is a facet of S/O, but rather the other way around and B) that it is a
perverse trashing of the historical record to say that the Greeks had a
mind/matter problem (at least one that looked like ours, like the S/O
Dilemma).
Bo said:
I have always seen the implications of this point, but it is important to
note that Phaedrus was a SOMist at that time and accepted its premises as
given, thus his mission was not to disprove SOM (he knew no such thing) but
to answer where quality belonged. He addressed the objective option first
and through various examples - much based on the empiricists - rejected
that. Then he turned to the subjective option. I admit that his
argumentation I was not as forcefully here, but at least he found it
unsound, and then - through the "getting hotter" game - arrived at the
insight that quality was the source of both objects and subjects, and -
later - that it was the human intellect that split quality that way.
The implications was the first tentative MOQ in which the subject/object or
mind/matter dualisms are intellect. How difficult can you possibly make
these things.
Matt:
Hey, look at that! You're forwarding an interpretation! Good for you, Bo!
This is the most promising suggestion you've made and I only wish you spent
more time developing it, rather than with the hip-shot, interruptory remarks
you use. As it happens, I can (and have) agree with your narrative, that
Phaedrus was still caught in the web of SOM at the beginning of the S/O
Dilemma. What he found out was that no argument he could forward could do
the trick because the terms of the question were all wrong. However, I
still think the implications you draw from this section are the wrong ones.
You say that by situating Quality behind S/O Pirsig has recognized that the
S/O is intellect. I don't think that's what he's saying. I think he's
saying, ala Lila, that the way we carve up Quality depends on purpose:
sometimes S/O, sometimes Romantic/Classic (which was the split he ended up
with in ZMM, I might add, not S/O), sometimes Dynamic/static. In other
words, the implications of the S/O Dilemma section is not "intellect equals
the S/O distinction," but the pragmatist attitude that allows us to wipe the
board and begin again.
Matt said:
All you do is beg the question in your favor without really explaining why.
How is it you beg the question, you ask? Because you're slipping in your
definition of the MoQ at the moment of critique. Everytime we explain our
definition (as opposed to yours) you freak, "The MoQ is an intellectual
pattern? Oh God, that means everything is an intellectual pattern!" But
that's a sleight-of-hand trick. We define the MoQ as "intellectual
patterns."
Bo interrupted:
... and by default all utterings about reality are "intellectual patterns",
heck, all utterings are because you see language itself as intellect? Isn't
that so? And by now you possibly see the fallacy of the "manipulation of
symbols" definition?
Matt:
Your interruption at that precise moment is telling, Bo. Right when I was
about to explain the sleight-of-hand trick you are performing (on yourself
most of all), you do it again. Or, at least, that's the implication. You
actually stop before you get to it, in utter disbelief that we could
continue on as we do. But no argument or explanation is offered and you
don't say a thing after my explanation of what you are doing (which, I'll
repeat, you _are_ doing and it causes your argument to fall apart--you need
to address that). Bo--it isn't obvious to us. Utterings are intellectual
patterns because language is definitive as the currency of intellectual
patterns. That's our position. So what's the problem? We've been trying
to get you to tell us. You seem to imply that not all utterings are
intellectual patterns. Then what the hell are they? That's the one thing
I've never been able to figure out. As we'll get to in a moment, how is
your position on language different from ours? Are your opinions about the
MoQ/Reality not intellectual patterns?
Bo said:
Matt you have revealed that you know what I mean [by "the MoQ is Reality"],
so why keep asking?
Matt:
But Bo, isn't it obvious that I don't understand because I'm unsure of what
you think the implications of it are? Shouldn't _me_ getting it _wrong_
make _you_ think I don't understand?
....continued in Part II
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