LS Re: Explain the subject-object metaphysics


Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Mon, 25 May 1998 08:59:19 +0100


Bo, squad,

Bo:
> (perhaps SAIOM should be renamed SOTAQI?
>(S-O thinking as Q-intellect)).

This change would sure make your idea dramatically more agreeable to me,
Bo! And it would make it more or less the same, I think, as saying that
the intellectual level is the level of self-consciousness or
self-awareness, in the sense that I advocated a while ago.

This provides us with these levels or steps:

The intellectual level is established by the ability to not only think
about the world, but also think about one self as an object in the
world; - 'our selves as objects' is what we call 'subjects'. This
self-reflective ability to 'think about one self' is, I believe, what we
call
self-consciousness. This we may call subject-object thinking.

And the next step (I believe this may be what Bo has referred to as the
fifth level - the metaphysics of quality level, but I am not sure it is
more than an evolution of/on the intelectual level) is the further
reflection upon subject-object thinking. This reflection upon
subject-object thinking is what Pirsig, and some other philosophers in
the last couple of centuries, has been doing. Pirsig called his own
second order (to use a buzz-word) thinking 'metaphysics of quality', and
he called all philosophical thinking, that was not second order, but
only first order subject-object thinking, for 'subject-object
metaphysics'.

Hence my insistence on subject-object metaphysics being the
*unquestioned* subject-object thinking, - the moment you start
reflecting upon this subject-object thinking, you are in effect doing
second order thinking, moving towards the next step, the step where we
find metaphysics of quality.

My reason for not considering this yet another level, but only a step or
an evolution on the intellectual level, is that the self-reflective
ability which gave rise to the intellectual level in the first place,
self-consciousness, is the same ability that provides for the second
step, given a few milleniums of serious thought.

To me this seems to fall into place, Bo, - do you agree or have I
misread your posting?

Hugo

 



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