Hi Scott & all,
wow!! I need to print this and read it a few dozen
times. I think I agree on one level but disagree on
another level. I think I am initially trying to
explain things from the human level only and I beleive
that you are explaining things from the Tao's eye
view/level & Human level. Anyway, I will work on
yours and Bo's reply to me during the week and hope to
be able to respond in some fashion next week end.
Reading this post was a rush.
[I know, it don't get out enough!:)]
Wowed by the Tao,
Gary
--- Scott R <jse885@spinn.net> wrote:
> 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
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
http://health.yahoo.com
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:27 BST