David Buchanan wrote on Mon, 28 Dec 1998 03:22:37
> 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.
Hi David and Group.
Thanks for reading my piece, and thanks for trying to pin-point our
"disagreement". I put it in quotation marks because I don't find any.
But let me go gradually through your letter. Please note that
everything I say is IMHO. I may sound as a guardian of the true MOQ
but (as I tell in the Dec.29 post to Jonathan) I am not authorized
(not even approved) by Pirsig.
> 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.)
An Interesting observation. The classic/romantic split was (as Mary
quotation from LILA shows) Pirsig's initial attempt to lay down a new
metaphysical cornerstone, but even if it sounded promising in ZMM
(that part was anticlimactic to me back then) it proved to be a dead
end; it was merely another subgrouping of the subject-object one. To
you, young ones, it may look as if P. wrote ZMM and then LILA in the
same bout of inspiration, but they are seventeen years apart. No, I
don't think I have confused the two, but even so it's not
significant; they are of the same kind.
> "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.
You have probably read more philosophy history than myself, and
this is a d... good summary of the development in those centuries. As
I see it (in a MOQ context) the Intellectual level came to the fore
again after the Medieval hibernation when religion (as a social
level representative) had dominated the scene. And if my idea
(Intellect=S-O) holds water we see how the mind-matter split was
"rediscovered", widened, until it gaped like a chasm; mind a loneer
at one side while "the world" receeded farther and farther away at
the other. Kant's "solution" made it all even more scary; now the
split was created by mind itself. Time, space, and causation was
"our mental setup" so the objective reality became even more
chimerical.
> 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.
Yes, yes, you have it right here. It is said that everything written
since are footnotes to Kant. Until Pirsig that is!!!!!! That's why I
get so "Jesuitical" when someone wants to put Pirsig in company with
the subjective/idealist camp.
> 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.
Yyyyyyeeeeeesssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 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.
I have used up my superlatives. This is GOOD!
> Looking forward to your response,
I must really think hard to find the disagreement. Perhaps it does
not sound right to you when I propose that SO-Metaphysics is the
Intellectual level of the MOQ. You possibly want it thrown out
totally? If so it's no great deal. I discard the 'metaphysics' part,
Intellect is the subject-object division as a static value that has
no value outside Intellect - least of all in the overall
Quality context - but as we humans look upon existence from Intellect
(we believe so at least) it's impossible to discard the S-O quality.
As told I have juggled so much with this my idea that I now have a
hard time NOT seeing things in its light, but it has hold up for (my)
scrutiny. And as said it looked like you intuited it yourself
from the this passage in your post of 23 Dec.
> ............snip.............. He puts the intellectual level at the top, yet
> he wants to overhaul it. Subject/object thinking works for practical
> purposes, like Newtonian science, but when it comes to answering the
> really tough questions about the nature of reality it fails. He wants to
> help usher in new intellectual patterns that can recognize and
> accomodate the underlying Quality; new words and concepts that describe
> reality in terms of the MOQ.
Whoops! I had a small epiphany right now. You say: "He wants to
help usher in new intellectual patterns that can recognize and
accomodate the underlying Quality". Right! If I claim that
Intellect S-O itself it can't be "modified" to recognize - or
accommodate - for quality. I see and you are right! That is why
I pursue the idea that the MOQ is a first attempt of a breakout from
the S-O chain of Intellect.
I will say no more now. Do you accept my reasoning on your
reasoning?
Bodvar.
homepage - http://www.moq.org
queries - mailto:moq@moq.org
unsubscribe - mailto:majordomo@moq.org with UNSUBSCRIBE MOQ_DISCUSS in
body of email
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:46 BST