LS The SOM-MOQ metamorphosis.


Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 18:00:03 +0100


Gene wrote:
>
> Bodvar wrote:
> > I should also have liked to treat the obvious question: "Where does
> > the mental activity take place if not in the mind?", but this is more
> > than enough for now.

> I'd be very interested to see your treatment of that obvious question.

Gene and TLS!

Yes it is a very natural question (after being told that the quality
idea rejects mind as a separate reality) and was for a long time THE
QUESTION for me. Pirsig is not very clear on this - as far as I
know LILA - so if anyone of you have found things that have a
bearing on it please inform me.

In various entries I have said that the first trap to be avoided is
putting Mind of SOM on equal footing with Dynamic Quality of the MOQ,
but have added that for the sake of expedience it can be likened to
the Static Intellectual Level - with the qualification that it
isn't fully satisfactory either. A bit confusing I admit, but an
important point in the SOM-MOQ transfer.

A few threads back, we thrashed for a long time round the
Artificial Intelligence conundrum. I defended the position that all
life forms are realities corresponding to their neural complexity
level: An amoeba is an experience (See ZMM page 244) different from
that of humans, but a complete experience in itself. No dim
version of our alleged objective reality. (this I called
"intelligence" to distinguish it from the Intellect of MOQ).

This position is similar - identical perhaps - to the "autopoesis"
idea of Varela and Maturana who hold that there is no Kantian
reality-in-itself "out there" (even here Pirsig anticipated things to
come), it is so because Phaedrus of ZMM, at that stage still was a
teacher in Bozeman, and looked upon things from the SOM platform. But
the later train of events - his reckless pursuit of the quality
idea; the view from the void of madness - changed all that. When
Phædrus of LILA returns, all intermediate stages are
gone, or perhaps integrated.

The "amoeba" idea (autopoesis) did away with objectivity and the
first "quality" idea discarded subjectivity as well. Left was a clean
slate upon which Pirsig reconstructed a reality consisting of only
Dynamic and Static Quality; Mind of SOM is everything or nothing. The
Inorganic level is inorganic "value-mind" (if the connotation of
"thinking matter" can be suspended) (quotation marks and brackets
flourish when language is supposed to carry different depths of
meaning) and so on up the value ladder.

The "value-mind" of Biology are feelings and sensations (No "mere",
they probe depths and carry messages that are inaccessible to the
"value-mind" of Intellect [language]) while the Social "value-mind"
are emotions (Even more powerful). This goes for all social creatures
 - mankind included- but at our advanced stage social patterns are
heavily bolstered by language-intellect's deliberations (remember
that Intellect started in society's service, and works there still).

Finally the "value-mind" of Intellect. Ideas, concepts and
manipulation of abstractions by the rules of language and logic.
In this context the term 'abstract' is not opposed to 'concrete'.
Abstractions are values of the Intellectual level, while concrete
(also the construction material) is value of the Inorganic level.

The opening question is now (IMHO) answered: Thinking is no
different from sensations, feelings, emotions etc. They are all
values belonging to the various static levels and "takes
place" within its dimension.

Did I manage to create a credible SOM-MOQ
"metamorphosis"?

Bo.

 

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