Sun, 27 Sep 1998
Glen (>) wrote to Jonathan (>>)
> Greetings Jonathon, Squad,
> Jonathan B. Marder wrote:
> > Let me first state that the whole of MoQ (or any other metaphysics) is a
> > pattern of the intellectual level which it contains. This is what gives
> > the intellectual level special status. There is an inherent recursion.
> While you can use the intellectual level to construct a map of reality, the map
> is never the reality. The MoQ doesn't contain reality, it's a useful analogy or
> metaphor. A Word Hoard of the World isn't the same as World. (possibly an
> Anglo-Saxon proverb). I have always thought that there is fundamental
> discontinuity between the way we describe or model reality and the reality we
> exist in. There is no description for reality that is reality. Isn't this what
> Pirsig so deftly defends against Plato? It's an analogy, a metaphor, perhaps a
> good one, perhaps a useful one , but while it may be a pattern constructed
> within the intellectual level it will never contain reality. While you may
> describe the color Red to someone who has never known it, do they really have
> the experience of the color Red? No they do not. Most people that have
> experiemented with highly altered states of consiousness understand the futility
> of trying to describe what it was like to someone who hasn't had the same
> experience. It's pointless, it's exactly like describing Red to someone who's
> never experienced it. Reality is the conveyor of experience, the intellectual
> PoV is the conveyor of maps. Some would fault me for telling them that their
> description of reality isn't reality but I don't think Robert Pirsig is one of
> them.
> I strongly disagree with your recursion analogy. Recursion is used when a
> function calls itself. It's a very useful concept in computer programming. Is
> recursion logical invalid in my program because it's a function calling itself
> in pursuit of an answer? Does it produce an incorrect answer? That a pattern
> of reality on the intellectual levels uses tools also constructed from the
> intellecual level to desribe the environment or reality seems like a good
> classically grounded procedure to me.
Glen and Jonathan (again) and Lila Squad..
About the map/terrain example. That one is a double-edged
sword as it implies an objective reality that a metaphysics may or
may not provide a correct map over (in LILA Phædrus uses the map
PROJECTION simile which is slightly different), but the MOQ skips
both object and subject as starting points!
But I do fully agree with Glen in this:
> Personally i've wondered whether your not looking for a solution of what is
> commonly known as the "Other Minds Problem". "How can I know (in the strong
> sense of the term know) that anything outside my mind exits?" I don't think
> there is a good "classical" solution to this question. If you are looking for a
> metaphysics that is reality then I wish you luck but think you will have to
> change to find an answer that will satisfy you.
Jonathan has - in his TV camera example - demonstrated the "idealist
stance" (solipsism I want to call it) of SOM: mind as the image of
itself in an unending loop - exactly what the Quality idea is such a
great liberation from. And now I hope that Jonathan - by virtue of
his own eminent example - understands why I so frantically oppose the
Q-intellect as "thinking itself" idea, and as hotly pursues the
SOTAQI.
I believe that Jonathan wants to incorporate the whole 'mental
activity' into his model of the Q-intellect while I maintain that it
is limited to SO-logic (REASON). 'Mental activity' at the Social
level is EMOTION and at the Biological level - SENSATION. That way SO
becomes a Q-stage, no more no less, and solidly incorporated into the
MOQ.
You all know the so-called strong interpretation of Quantum mech. It
has no connection to classical physics except through a mathematical
transformation. In all humbleness do I call the SOTAQI a strong
interpretation of Quality Metaphysics: esoteric, but unassailable.
The MOQ now needs a safe base from where it can operate unmolested.
Bodvar
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