Hi Bo:
I think I may be getting a glimmer of why I have had some trouble with
your viewpoint. So please bear with me as I attempt to "translate" what
you say into my own words.
> Each time I claim that the Quality Idea is a separate level I get Wavedave
> on my heels and then I have to call it a "unruly intellectual pattern" to
> appease him :-). Whatever it is at some position able to look down on
> intellect .....not as a map, but as the map/terrain divide itself. IMO.
I'm just beginning to really focus in on your phrase "Quality Idea"
(sometimes Q-Idea for short). When you said the Q-Idea is "able to look
down on intellect" I suddenly related the Q-Idea to that within me that
that "sees" objects but cannot see itself. i.e., the I that "sees" all that I
"know"-- including "me." In other words, the Q-Idea is, in a word,
Dynamic Quality itself, unable to be described or made on object since
it is the ultimate source of objects (and logically, subjects). Translation:
Q-Idea equals pure experience equals ultimate reality.
So when you refer to the Q-Idea, you're pointing to true reality which we
can understand since it is our pure experience but which we cannot put
into words without dividing it. Once we divide the purity of reality we
forget we have divided it, then forget we have forgotten it. So the S/O
division becomes what we think to be true reality when actually it is the
static intellectual level of the MOQ. The S/O division creates a pseudo
or virtual reality.
>I also admit that Pirsig
> says that both SOM and MOQ are intellectual patterns. I don't claim that
> any LILA text underpins my notion (that Intellect is SOM and SOM alone) but
> the Q.idea conveys that impression ...on me, can't help it.
This also puzzled me, but now I think I've got it. To you it seems the MOQ
cannot be properly thought about as an intellectual pattern because its main
feature, DQ, is not an intellectual pattern. How can you put something in the
intellectual level that intrinsically denies a part of intellect? A palpable hit,
I'd say.
> I don't know if it's a catch here, but the SOLAQI idea suggests that the
> intellectual level is the VALUE of the subject/object-divided. Thus, as
> top notch, it dominated existence to the degree of making us believe that
> this was REALITY ITSELF (a metaphysics) with the arrival of the MOQ it is
> seen as a mere static level.
I understand your value concept of the S/O divide. All MOQ levels
consist of values. But I get a bit side-tracked when you refer to a
metaphysics as "reality itself." The MOQ is a metaphysics, but not
"reality itself." DQ is reality itself. The MOQ is partly an intellectual
pattern and thus partly in the intellectual level WHEN LOOKED DOWN
ON by the Q-Idea.
It can get confusing. Here's how Pirsig addressed the issue in Chap. 32:
"The same thing that's wrong with philosophology when it tries to control
and devour philosophy is wrong with metaphysics when it tries to devour the
world intellectually. It attempts to capture the Dynamic within a static pattern.
But it never does. You never get it right. So why try?"
Well, for three years going on four, (or is it four going on five?) we've
been trying to get it right. I hope this post contributes a bit to that goal,
at least as far as my understanding of what you've been saying all
along.
Platt
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