From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Fri Sep 19 2003 - 21:36:09 BST
Hi Scott
I would really like to get up to speed with this
debate because I find I agree closely with your posts
and really like the Barfield and L of CI. But I cannot see
why this cannot be used to support the MOQ as it stands
without contradiction. L of CI is very close to Francois
Laruelle and his version of open dialectic it seems to me.
Laurelle was discussed in Radical Philosophy Magazine 121 last month by Ray
Brassier..
By the way my book is all about free-life and limitation if you want to read
it.
The point of L of CI seems to me to hold onto both unity and choice or
openness
as not simply prior but implicit in any form of dualist pairs. A fine heresy
as heresy is
derived from the Greek for choice. I like to think of myself as such a
heretic.
Laurelle suggests that unlike all other kinds of metaphysics decision is
essence.
Decision implies splitting asunder that which is originally a unity.
Decision of course implies dynamic quality. Human experience is nothing if
not
full of dynamic quality. The emergence of static quality in human experience
is an effort,
memory and intelligence are required. Analysis/choice requires a
separation/alienation
of what is given. Eg into Kants: noumenal/phenomenal or Hegel's
subject/substance.
This activity/choice is entirely dynamic and creative because you have
created whatever
distinction you have set up between the two. And the distinction implies
both the difference
and the unity ot the two distinct poles because the distinction also implies
the givenness of
the two terms, hence different but inseparable. I think this is what L of CI
is also
getting at. When we turn to talking about human beings we have to see the
full complexity:
static biological patterns: we all have 2 hands, dynamic biological patterns
all individuals
grow and in non-determined ways e.g. brain cell connectivities as related to
environment,
static social patterns-we all sit down to meals, dynamic ones -some
individuals change class,
static intellectual patterns -common usage of English, dynamic writing of
poems,etc. The problem
with SoM being loss of focus on dynamic quality and therefore also the unity
of static/dynamic in
undifferentiated quality. We need the unity to keep challenging the creative
differentiation, so you
can question when we get bogged down in one approach to reality. We SO need
to be flexible
and dynamic in our numerous language games (emphasis more on play), and stop
trying to reduce
experience to yet another cut of reality, often focusing on just one of the
poles after the cut is made.
When you say the subject is a mystery I assume you are pointing to the
dynamic quality of the subject.
Equally the object is a mystery, why is there anything rather than nothing.
For me awareness is possible
because really subject and object is a unity, Da-sein or Being-there is what
being an aware human being is.
Da-sein is not bordered by the outline of the human body, the object and
subject of awareness are equally
Da-sein or what it is to be human. Put a human body in total isolation and
you no longer have a human being.
And of course we can only start talking about subjects and objects as part
of human experience when
we have the language to make them start appearing, as we divide up our
experience. Hence for early
cultures your spirit can occupy a tree, still does rather obviously I would
suggest, if the tree is not full
of your spirit how do you know it is there? I cannot think of awareness as
anything other than primary,
and has to be based on unity, otherwise you get into rather Kantian problems
about how knowledge could
ever be possible, re-cognise has to imply the 're', i.e. the recogntion in
subject-object relations is plausible
if the movement is from the One to the many to a new one. Brassier compares
it to a moebius strip, the circle is cut,
then twisted and then rejoined, still joined but now a new kind of
circle -with an added twist.
I also think that the dynamic quality possessed by human beings or
possessing human beings simply says that they have a future, having a future
implies indeterminacy and openness, and having a future implies being
connected to many different
possibilities, and being human means making choices and this implies values
and a frightening level of responsibility
(that almost no one seems to realise) and an awareness of many possible
futures implies intelligence because
intelligence must be chosing between futures, what else is it for? And not
chosing, or repeating old patterns, implies
being unaware and unconscious, and perhaps the most sleepy things of all are
material beings.
Also if human beings are touched by dynamic quality what is our relationship
to all the static patterns
that lie around us? Like frozen bits of choice, like fossils, like bad
habits we can't shake off. Perhaps, we are
more responsible for what lies around us than we usually think, perhaps this
explains the anthropic principle
problem.
Oh yes, language and intellect should not be treated as unreal, they are
super real, they are the light which we use
to illuminate the world, what a world it is with language and intellect! The
cosmos is surely an event as much as the
microcosm of man is, the dynamic choice implied in all thinking as per L of
CI or the non-philosophy
of Laruelle, has surely also occurred on the way from big bang to all the
complex differentiation of matter and life forms.
I agree that there is a good argument that MOQ, post-modernism, L of CI,
non-philosophy, could be put
together into a new metaphysics, a kind of meta-physics that is beyond the
wildest imagination of the pragmatists
and what they mean by metaphysics. We so need not to escape or avoid
thinking but we also need to hang onto
the oneness/unity of quality/experience so that everything is constitutive
of who we are rather than as standing up against
us. There seems to be an inevitable logic to pushing the SOM divide as far
as you can take it so as to understand how
the two poles are inseparable and from the same source.
regards
David Morey
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott R" <jse885@spinn.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: MD Dealing with S/O
> Paul and Platt (who responded similarly),
>
> I'm clearly having trouble making my point clear :-). I've ranted before
> about people confusing the grammatical subject and object (def. #4) with
the
> philosophical subject and object (#5 or #2), so I am not making that
> mistake. The "I" is more than a figure of speech. It is a pole in a
polarity
> (a contradictory identity).
>
> In brief, I find the idea that the X in X/SPoV is more SPoV just does not
> work. It is on a par with the materialist answer to SOM: since the subject
> is a mystery, assume it is more object. For Pirsig to make the "subject is
> more SPoV" to work, he had to come up with this (thanks, Platt, for the
> quote):
>
> "By contrast the Metaphysics of Quality, also going back to square one,
> says that man is composed of static levels of patterns of evolution
> with a capability of response to Dynamic Quality." (Chap. 24)
>
> This sweeps under the rug the mystery of how DQ and SQ can relate, by
adding
> the "capability of response" to SQ. This is arm-waving, the same sort that
> materialists do in response to the question of how one complex set of
> material objects can be aware of another set: it "just happens" when
things
> get sufficiently complex. On the other hand, if an ecology of SQ responds
to
> DQ, then it is dynamic, not static, or one has to say there is no identity
> that "carries over" the pre-responding SQ to the post-responding SQ. Yet
> there obviously is an identity (we know ourselves to be such), but it is
> self-contradictory.
>
> This is why the logic of contradictory identity is necessary. It has the
> positive effect of letting one identify when one is going into error by
> emphasizing one pole of a contradictory identity (aka a polarity) over the
> other. In SOM, this is what happens when one chooses idealism or
> materialism. In the MOQ, this happens in the above quote.
>
> Where Pirsig goes wrong (in my opinion, and in answer to Platt's query
over
> differing assumptions) is back at the beginning where he discusses the
> mystics' objection to metaphysics. The mystics (according to Pirsig)
> emphasize "undivided experience" over language and intellect *about*
> experience. Well, many mystics do just that, but not all. But while all
will
> agree that language and intellect is a major problem, the problem lies in
> limiting beliefs, not in language or intellect itself. But Pirsig,
> influenced by nominalism, treats language and intellect as less real in
> comparison with this hypothetical undivided experience. I say
hypothetical,
> because all experience presupposes distinctions, if nothing else, the
> distinction between the experience and the absence of the experience.
> Indeed, experience happens *by means of* distinctions.
>
> And so we have (from an earlier post from Paul):
>
> "I suppose "awareness" may be used tentatively but "thinking" is
> definitely not synonymous with Quality."
>
> Why not thinking? The ability to think is just as mysterious as the
ability
> to be aware, or the ability to respond to DQ, or the ability to abstract,
or
> the ability to use language, or the ability to perceive value, or the
> ability to experience. Furthermore, it is only through thinking that one
> can dig out and overcome limiting beliefs, and thus grow. It is
undecidable
> whether such thinking is that of the little self or of the Big Self, but
> then the little self *is* the Big Self (Franklin Merrell-Wolff's last
> thought before his awakening was: there is nothing to attain. "You are
> already That which you seek").
>
> My conclusion (or assumption?), anyway, my message from the MOQ, with this
> correction, is not that we should treat metaphysics as something one does,
> like getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies, but that it is a road to
> salvation. If, that is, it is oriented around identifying and removing
> limitations, and not setting them. The MOQ does this well, but not
entirely.
> As I've said before, the intellectual level has been born, but it is still
> in its infancy, and that is why it is a major problem to mystic
realization.
> The task is not to try to escape thinking, as Pirsig's mystics seem to
want
> to do, but to focus on it, because it -- *because* of its S/O form -- is
> DQ/SQ tension = Quality, for us at our current stage of evolution. Note
the
> word "focus", and its use in def. #2 (from LC #111). When thinking about
> thinking, thinking is both subject and object, yet it is not meaningless
for
> it to be so. Because we are able to think about thinking, to at once
create
> and reunite the S/O divide we have Quality right in our little selves, and
> that is why the S/O divide is value in the fourth level. It is a curse as
> long as one believes that the divide is an absolute one, but the L of CI
> prevents that, as does the MOQ. But the L of CI also prevents denying one
> side of the divide or the other, which is the error I see in the MOQ.
>
> - Scott
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Turner" <paulj.turner@ntlworld.com>
>
> > [Scott:]
> > The problem is that there is no way to talk about the intellect without
> > talking about an X/Y divide, traditionally called the S/O divide. But we
> > can't use "object" for "Y" and since subject in the #5 sense is also
> > verboten, what do we use instead? Well, in the MOQ one can refer to
> > static
> > patterns of value, so we have at least X/SPoV. Now what goes into "X"?
> >
> > [Paul:]
> > More SPoV. All of the experience you are referring to, that SOM
> > identifies as subject experiencing object is subsumed as static patterns
> > of value created by Dynamic Quality.
> >
> > [Scott:]
> > In the MOQ, the only thing that is not SPoV is DQ, but that is not what
> > is
> > traditionally thought of as the "subject".
> >
> > [Paul:]
> > No, because "subject" is also static patterns of value. You have
> > converted experience into an object and you're looking for somewhere to
> > locate the subject. This is the trouble with subject-object metaphysics.
> >
> > [Scott:]
> > So how do I talk about thinking, perceiving, feeling, understanding,
> > willing, etc. in general terms, that is, philosophically?
> >
> > [Paul:]
> > In terms of static-Dynamic experience.
> >
> > [Scott quoted dmb:]
> > > I mean, I still don't know why
> > > we would need anything more than intellect to understand the MOQ.
> >
> > [Scott:]
> > "I understand the MOQ [or don't understand]". That's a case of the S/O
> > divide, in the #2 or #5 sense. Me on one side, the MOQ on the other.
> >
> > [Paul:]
> > "I" is a figure of speech, it is how our language is constructed,
> > subject-verb-object. This doesn't mean that we have to grant language a
> > metaphysically accurate status.
> >
> > The MOQ would probably say that the most "real" part of what is going on
> > in "I understand the MOQ" is captured in the "understand" part. The
> > subject [I] and object [the MOQ] of the sentence are derived from an
> > experience described as "understanding" which is reducible to an
> > assertion of value, the value of seeing harmony in an intellectual
> > pattern. The "I" and "the MOQ" are then both described as intellectual
> > patterns created by the experience, there is no separate "I" or "MOQ"
> > that created the experience by "coming together".
> >
> > [Scott:]
> > The MOQ is not an object (def. #1), so this statement is impossible,
> > according to the MOQ.
> >
> > [Paul:]
> > The statement is simply stated as it is. If you then go ahead and work
> > out a metaphysical explanation of "what just happened" then, as above,
> > you have to untangle the sentence which is constructed in a
> > subject-verb-object way and work out how value has created the
> > experience which the sentence describes. If you wish to do so. It's
> > certainly easier to believe the SOM version which is implicit in our
> > language and write the MOQ off as a bit screwy.
> >
> > [Scott:]
> > The same applies to all his examples, like mathematics. If I think about
> > a
> > statement about triangles, and want to prove it, I (subject) treat the
> > concepts triangle, line, etc. as objects (sense #2).
> >
> > [Paul:]
> > That is a perfect subject-object metaphysics statement, taking the
> > English language as metaphysics in itself. Think of it another way, a
> > math problem is solving itself by creating ideas in a pattern of values
> > called "Scott" that thinks it is solving the problem! Sounds crazy, I
> > know, but it's amazing how many musicians and artists describe how a
> > masterpiece "created itself".
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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