BODVAR, (mary and others might find this interesting:)
Thanks for the post on Sunday. At first it seemed to me that our
disagreement over the top levels was mostly semantic. I couldn't quite
identify the problem until I remembered something you said in your
treatise on the MOQ, which I recently read. I believe our disagree is
actually based on SOM and not on the MOQ.
Instead of trying to untangle everything you've written about it, I'd
like to try explaining the SOM as I understand it. It seems easier and
it'll make this post more accessable to our fellow philosophers. I'll
try to be brief.
To put it simply, its my impression that you have confused
Subject/Object Metaphysics with the classic/romantic split. Naturally,
this confusion would lead to misunderstanding concerning the MOQ, but
for the sake of simplicity I'll confine my comments to the SOM. ( Mary
and others have been asking about SOM.)
"I think, therefore I am." is the quintessential subject/obect
statement, Descartes' radical skepticism lead him to the conclusion that
he (the subject) could know nothing about the world (the object). All he
knew was that he had thoughts. He couldn't know if his thoughts were
correct, he couldn't know if his thoughts corresponded to reality, or
even if there was a reality beyond his thoughts at all. He used the
example of a evil genius or god who had kept Descates brain in a jar and
created all the illusions that caused the philosopher to believe in the
world as reality. All he could really know for certain was that there
must be a doubter if he had doubts; there must be a thinker if he had
thoughts.
Kant later modified and softened Descatres' lonely epistomology, as you
mention in the treatise. Kant said that ultimately we don't know if our
thoughts (subjective reality) correspond to the world (objective
reality) but we percieve sensory data from something out there and the
mind's transcendental categories then shape the data into concepts. It's
like putting dough through a pasta maker.
Many, many philosophies have proceeded out of Kant's view. Lots of
different "isms" have grown out of the debate. Each view sort of picked
it's favorite half of the dicotomy (subject and object) and argues for
its' truth and supremacy. Each subsequent philosophy places a slightly
different value on one or the other, or claims to have balanced subject
and object.
As Pirsig explains, the various positions can be loosely grouped into
two camps, classic and romantic. Obviously, the classic camp favors
math, science, tecchnology, logic and other "objective" modes of
thought. The romantics favor intuition, passion, emotion, art and other
forms of "subjective" thinking. But all of these "isms" are a product of
SOM, not the SOM itself. The wildest romantic and the most hard-nosed
skeptic agree that reality is made up of Subjects and Objects. The poet
and the scientist both operate within the same metaphysical system,
namely SOM.
Pirsig's MOQ is an alternative view where neither subject nor object is
supreme. Instead, subjects and objects are created by Quality. He's
saying that subjects and objects do exist, but only as intellectual
patterns of value, which are also created by Quality. I believe the
phrase "patterns of value" has essential the same meaning as "static
quality". They are both refer to that which is created by Dynamic
Quality. They are both ways of saying that Quality has frozen into a
stable form or crystalized into an enduring pattern. All this static
quality is percieved in SOM as the world of subjects and objects.
Looking forward to your response,
David B.
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