David L. and David B. and Lila Squad.
DAVID L. (DLT) wrote: That he is....)
> Still tryn' to cipher that "mind-numbingly unclear .. philosophical message
> interlarded with heavy slabs of historical anthropological-philosophical
> ruminations which vary from the worthless to the plausible but rigorously
> unoriginal" stuff. And beginning to see, after following these discussions for
> a couple of years, that Strawson was not completely wrong. My mind is
> continues to become "numbingly unclear' about philosophy in general and Pirsig
> in particular.
Oh, is it that bad Dave? Yes, we have been through quite an ordeal
since we joined the Lila Squad, but whatever our sins we can't be
accused of not boldly facing the problems - or of idolizing Pirsig.
He has probably been attacked more severely at this forum than by any
strawmen.
> Yes, but some of the basics like the primacy of experience carry over between
> the two, with little if any, change.
"Primacy of experience", yes, but experience is of all levels and
we are of all levels. "Man and his experience" (from your previous
post) becomes so mind-like.
> .... your frustration is mine. But I think this is where strengths and the
> confusions of merging the "intuitive" Eastern philosophies with "rational"
> Western philosophies lies.The East says reality is One. The West says
> reality is Many. Pirsig says in so much as we conceive of reality as One,
> we are intuitively right, but that the One we experience is Not-One because
> it is contingent on the mediation or filtering of the Many. Round and round
> it goes where it stops nobody knows.
You are more of a mystic (in a positive sense) than I. What about my
rationalistic grand sweep below?
> Agreed.But with tongue firmly place in cheek would suggest that one could also
> take the position that the "intellectual level" did not emerge until sometime
> between 1974 and 1991. We certainly had no clue of it's existance prior to
> November of 1991.
Point taken :-)
************************
DAVID B.
Take a bow David. Yours was one of the most insightful and q-laden
posts I have ever read. I became so absorbed that I forgot to look for
disagreements ;-). It looks like ZAMM turns our creativity on. Of
course, I could have wished for a more exact definition of the
Intellectual level, but your demonstration of its relationship with
social mythology is perhaps more to the point than my quest for
principles. Someone (Troy Becker) once said that such
principle-hunting is foreign to the MOQ.
Let me make a grand sweep. Let's assume that the Greek
experience as described in the ZAMM was Q-Intellect (as such, not
merely the scientific pattern) confronting Q-Society, you seem to see
it that way. That the same event can be seen as the advent of
subject-object metaphysics is affirmed by David L. and these two
put together mathematically makes the static intellectual level
identical to SOM.
What is achieved by this (aka: SOLAQI)? It provides us with the much
sought for transformation procedure between the two metaphysics.
Jonathan (at the MD) referring to the classical Newtonian and General
Relativity denied that such a procedure is necessary, but he is
wrong; the two can't be interchanged ------as calculating tools! (I
got this from a physics doctor).
This goes for the MOQ and SOM and the ignorance/neglect of this
messes up so many well-meaning arguments - I am loth to say even
Pirsig's own of the quoted letter to Ant. McWatt (see below).
See it this way: When SOM as Q-Intellect was new - as David B. so
elegantly presented it - there was probably a lot of confusion
between the old myths and the newfangled insight, and many tried to
reconcile the two - even return to the good old mythological times.
That wasn't possible; it's one or the other, I for one see the
Middle Age as a lapse back to (social) mythos. Upon the return of
REASON (Renaissance) it left all pretexts of being reconcilable with
religion (I could go on for ever about how modern Christianity really
is a hostage of Q-Intellect and works its head off trying to cover it
up, but will limit myself). Religion/Mythos became a subject of sudy
by the true and objective and scientific world view.
Likewise, we the newly converted MOQists are a little - um - scared of
what Pirsig says or incapable of understanding it, and try to
keep the MOQ SOM-compatible; two parallel systems that can be
freely interchanged, a MOQ that can be explained with SOM's
terminology, but that's really impossible. SOM must become a subset of
it or we will have a "dark age".
To see SOM as merely one intellectual pattern and MOQ as another
IP containing itself is untenable. This is good old MIND, and
Pirsig's own:
"The intellectual pattern that says "there is an external
world of things out there which are independent of
intellectual patterns". That is one of the highest quality
intellectual patterns there is. And in this highest
quality intellectual pattern, external objects appear
historically before intellectual patterns... But this
highest quality intellectual pattern itself comes before
the external world, not after, as is commonly presumed
by the materialists."
makes it no better. (I have finally worked my courage up to criticize
it). To avoid a latter day Dark Age it's adamant to quickly leave all
pretexts of pleasing SOism. SOM is MOQ's Intellectual level and
MOQ - although its origin is in Intellect - is DQ's attempt to
escape Q-Intellect. That way subject-objectivity (as sicence) may go
about its business as usual. PhÊdrus of LILA says no instrument
reading will change because of the MOQ view. Exactly, and yet
EVERYTHING will change. Look at me, by now I am simply unable to
return to Subject-Object metaphysics as if nothing has happened.
Thanks for your attention.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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