Gary,
Since most of your response is directed at Bo's response, I'll not
respond directly, rather see if I can help clarify my own position.
First, I think the overall confusion was instigated by Pirsig, by his
labelling social and intellectual patterns as "the subject" and
inorganic/biological patterns as "the object". This is ok, and makes
sense to explain how we traditionally use the word "objective" to
suggest unbiased thinking and "subjective" to suggest biased. However,
this is NOT how philosophy currently uses the terms when the topic under
discussion is intentionality. There, the assumption (a SOM one) is that
all of our experience is that of a Subject perceiving/experiencing/etc.
an Object. So in this venue, the subject/object divide is meant to be
the same as the observer/observed divide, and I will be using SOT to
mean that.
SOLAQI is, then, using the words "Subject" and Object" in the
intentional sense, and is saying that our intellectual activity comes in
the form of a subject/observer experiencing/observing an
object/observed. Under the category of "observed" are thoughts,
feelings, and social patterns, once they are taken under reflection.
"reflection", of course, is another word for SOT.
Therefore, I claim that the only way we DO think reflectively is SOT (we
also think non-reflectively, on automatic pilot, so to speak, but that
is not, in my view, q-intellect.). And so the MOQ as it currently exists
is a product of SOT. So, yes, both SOM and the MOQ are maps.
Up to here, I think we agree. Correct me if not.
You say that in the East there was q-intellect that was not SOT. On this
I disagree. Recall, first, that what we consider the wisdom of the East
was formulated at about the same time that SOT had its beginnings in the
West. The difference between the two is that in the East there was more
attention paid to the ineffability of the Tao/Brahman/etc. But note that
this ineffability only becomes a problem IF one is undergoing SOT. That
is, one has developed the awareness that there are objects "out there"
independent of my thinking of them. Then, to deal with the Tao, one must
emphasize that it is NOT an object.
The error of SOM is to think that the observer and the observed are
independently real (or in its materialist form, that only the observed
is real and the observer is some sort of epiphenomenon). The smart
thinkers of both East and West understood this, but are restricted to
SOT to explain this. The very idea of "explaining" is a SOT phenomenon.
Now here is where I feel that your emphasis on "the map is not the
territory" becomes a danger. If the observer and the observed are not
independent (as Buddhism et al, and now the MOQ affirm), then there is a
prior whatever that produces them in mutual interdependence. In the MOQ
that is Quality, whose initial division (in our understanding) is into
DQ and sq. So the question is, how does this relate to our understanding
of SOT?
Clearly (I hope), "static patterns of value" are what we call the
observed. That would seem to leave DQ as the observer. I think this is,
on first approximation, correct. It is not, of course "me". "I" am a set
of static patterns, which in some way filter my experience of all static
patterns (leading to the other meaning of "subjective" and "objective"),
and so to "experience" DQ "I" must dissolve all static patterns (as
Pirsig says, ch. 30). So far, so good (standard mystical understanding).
But now I must appeal, once again, to Franklin Merrell-Wolff. In his
aphorisms (http://www.integralscience.org/gsc/#aphorisms), he says that
the "Pure Subject", that is, what you get when the Universe (the
observed) completely dissolves, is Nirvana. Thus we have Pure Subject =
Nirvana = DQ. However, Merrell-Wolff experienced a second Recognition in
which Nirvana too dissolved into what he initially called the High
Indifference, and later Consciousness without an object and without a
subject. For this to be the case, then DQ must also, in some way be the
Universe, since in some way Nirvana and samsara are the same. I don't
expect to understand this, only to accept it as a guide.
In particular, it tells me that the set of static patterns that I
experience is as much a map as my thinking of it, that to make the
distinction "the map is not the territory" is, ultimately, as bogus as
the distinction between subject and object. It tends to reinforce the
idea that there is an independently existing objective reality.
But here we are, still doing SOT. I think it inescapable that for SOT to
be occurring, Wolff's "Pure Subject" has to be there, though that of
course is not anything we can be aware of. But the important point is
that the observed DOES NOT EXIST except when observed. That is, the
action of DQ in observing the observed is at the same time the creation
of the observed. The hazard at this point is to think that the observed
is being created "out of" some unobserved substance. That is a SOM
mistake. And that is why I criticize your metaphysics (as given in your
essay) for assuming that "everything" is, fundamentally, matter/energy.
- Scott
Gary Jaron wrote:
> Hi Bo, Scott and all,
> This post has been bothering me and I had no time to reply till now.
>
> So here goes.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <skutvik@online.no>
> To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 3:48 AM
> Subject: Re: MD Consciousness
>
etc.
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