COMMENTS TO: ROB (STILLWELL), DAVID,
GLOVE, MARY, KEN, HORSE, MAGGIE AND STRUAN.
(some of the comments are badly outdated. The discussion
races on)
ROB
Warmly welcome to the learned company.I have always been wary of
constructing moral dilemmas on which to apply the MOQ. I
guess I do apply it to everything in a general sense, but it is too
universal for the day-to-day scale; common sense goes a
long way. Regarding "love" as a new level I join David Buchanan in
his reply to you.
DAVID
Thanks for answering Rob so well about his moral puzzle and
on the love business. You are and one of the few who has taken to
Pirsig's ideas intuitively. Over to your message of 30 Dec where you
wrote:
> As I read your Dec. 30 post, our disagreement seemed to melt
> away. I had just one remaining objection; The claim that Pirsig's
> fourth level (intellectual) is equal to Subject/Object metaphysics.
> But then you said you "had a small epiphiny" and now doubt that
> view!?! Cool! That's what good conversation is all about! That's
> happened to me before and it's the reason I love this kind of
> debate.
Er.....my 'epipahny' was merely that I suddenly saw what your
trouble (with accepting my view) was. Again, if - as I claim -
Intellect is subject-objectivism itself it can't be amended to
include anti-S/O ideas. That's why I suggest that the Quality idea is
an attempt to break free from Intellect. By the way, you seem no
stranger to the notion of a movement transcending Intellect.
You object to the the idea that subject-objectivism all there is to
Intellect by saying:
> It's a subtle, but crucial difference. The intellectual level is NOT
> exactly the same as SOM. For example, Pirsig's books are full of
> thoughts that are, the author hopes, not within SOM. I'd argue that
> all genuine Mysticisms are also outside of SOM and that's why the
> author uses them to help explain the MOQ. In short the author
> believes that the intellect can handle metaphysical systems other
> than SOM. Its just that the SOM has become so dominant that we tend
> to equate it with not only the intellect, as you formerly believed,
> but with reality itself.
David, listen: Q-Intellect (sorry) is not exactly S-O Metaphysics,
(i.e: the idea that S-O split is reality itself), but it is the
subject-object distinction; an enormous achievement that has given us
the world - no less - but to see this context we have to jettison
the SOM notion of Intellect as "mind" (or thinking").
Of course Pirsig's books are full of anti-SOM thoughts; these
have up to now been weeded out by Intellect's immune system -
psychiatry - or, very magnanimously, been allowed to stay if
declaring itself mysticism. The power of Pirsig's idea is
that mysticism now is the very base of a new metaphysics. An
intuitive feeling of something bigger has always hammered on the
walls of reason, but until the MOQ it did not have the means to
scale it.
GLOVE
You wrote on Fri 1 Jan. 1999
> during my reading and pondering, i have been consistently struck by
> the fact that cultural value, or the social level of the Metaphysics
> of Quality, seems to be the highest value we conceive of. our entire
> realities consist of social level values created by our interaction
> with our environment. in order to further understand this
> discrepency with the Metaphysics of Quality i feel Force of Value
> must be taken into consideration. this is my on-going attempt.
> please bear with any mistakes or omissions.
...cultural value, or the social level.......?? I think that Pirsig
repeatedly refers to 'culture' as patterns of Intellect, in the
same way that societies are social patterns and organisms are
biological patterns. Also do I object to the idea of atoms controlled
by forces. That evokes "matter" subject to natural laws. No, atoms
are the the inorganic patterns themselves. Full stop!
Risky Roger also nurtured this division of forces and their
manifestations, and I'm not against such a dichotomy IF ONLY WE
SEE IT AS INTELLECT SUPERIMPOSING ITSELF ON THE LOWER LEVELS.
Perhaps you see this Glove, but it doesn't sound like it. You make it
all so complicated. For instance your definition of the various
levels (here only INTELLECT):
> INTELLECT- dis-creative forces of value direct all static intellect
> patterns of value. truly new and creative ideas arise individually
> and if they contain value, permeate the social level thru
> interaction between individuals in some fashion, and give rise to
> new static social patterns of value when the old ones are
> discredited-discreated by the underlying force of value contained in
> the static intellect patterns of value. every Good idea is a
> contradiction of an existing social idea. the intellect functions in
> non-Time and is not bound by the creative linear forces of the
> social level, but the discreative forces of value. the intellect
> generalizes the Quality Event by perceiving before it occurs.
This will send most people scrambling for cover.
MARY
Your grasp of the Quality idea is firm, and shame on me for
making statements that confuse you. You wrote:
> Bodvar, perhaps I'm misinterpreting you completely, but when Pirsig
> says things like "Values are 'more' empirical than subjects or
> objects" (Lila, pg 75), and that "Quality is the empirical reality
> of the world" (pg 76), then I manage to infer that the
> *manifestations* of static values are subjects and objects.
What these statements say is that it is VALUE we perceive, while
subjects and objects are perceptions created by the SOM filter.
I am a little more "catholic" than Pirsig in that I find his
Inorganic+Organic value = object, and Social+Intellect = subject
a little feeble, and have taken the liberty to forward a
stronger interpretation; the SOLAQI. I don't know if I have improved
upon the MOQ, but it seems so much easier to defend. Still, feel free
to give it....!
> If there's some other way to see them I don't know what it is? I must
> be a hopeless SOMite, since I can't seem to actually think of
> anything without it being in the context of subjects and objects.
> Please, please, give me an example of how to think without employing
> it! Could it be that I am making this more complex than Pirsig
> intended? Is it really just a matter of replacing causation with
> preference? And if we resist imposing S/Os on the other levels,
> then how do we study them?
No, you are not a SOMite and there is no other way than employing
S-O, when STUDYING existence. As above to Glove: it's impossible not
to impose Intellect on to the other levels, and it is as it should be
if we manage to see that this is the world according to Intellect,
but keep in mind that there is an overall Quality context where
Intellct is a static level.
However, we experience/perceive the world according to other
levels too. When under a strong sense influence (pain or lust) we
give a d... about S-O . We ARE the sensations. When socially fixated
we (may) identify so strongly with "our cause" that we drop all
objectivity: My ....(fill in)....right or wrong!
[What perception from Inorganic value is like I haven't figured out
yet, but I'll report when there. :-)]
PS. The AI issue is too big (sorry for raising it) and deserves a
separate program.
KEN
I must say that I tend to agree with David on the mysticism issue.
Tend to - because I'm not blind to the value of your rational
approach if only we can differentiate between the static religions
and the mystics. Pirsig equates the mystic experience with Dynamic
Quality: a dizzying and dangerous experience; nothing to be sought
after deliberately. He himself becamea victim of an encounter
with dynamic experience (of the ?th kind). We should be grateful
to him for this sacrifice (I get quite worship-like now) and try to
latch his vision as fast as possible.
Again, if we keep in mind that the physical explanation is
Intellect's great achievement, but not the complete picture because
Intellect is merely one static level - the highest, but subordinate
to the overall Dynamic Quality - then everybody should be
satisfied.
HORSE
Big grin when seeing your message of Sun. 3 Jan with the long
"attachment" of HTML! But seriously, I agree wholeheartedly with your
reply to Rob. We must see the overall MOQ picture to grasp its
magnitude. We - the veterans - have been through so many definitions
and hairsplitting gumption-draining experiences, but then the
Quality idea hits and it is as fresh as ever.
MAGGIE
Good to hear that you are still there. The Bergson input was
interesting. I have of course heard his name mentioned, but never
actually read him (even if I try to sound like I knew every
philosophical direction before meeting Pirsig :-)). Yet, again, it's
the same objection as with the Santiago theory that Roger aired a few
days ago. Without Pirsig's first metaphysical groundwork it gets very
close, but not quite it. Yet, give us a summary when through with
Bergson.
I would have like to tell the story of a strange character who
entered our local philosophical scene around 1985. If Gunn or any
other Norwegian lurkers hear this I wonder if they remember
Öyvind Jensen and his Citrus Law? Well, I will do it some day: it was
also a system uncannily like the MOQ, but lacked the new metphysical
platform and petered out, but it shows that something's "in the air".
STRUAN
Welcome (back). Our discussion at the sci.phil.meta list came to a
standstill, but may be resumed - some day. You wrote on
mysticism:
> On a final (but important) note, I would suggest that setting up mysticism
> and materialism as irreconcilable opposites is to misunderstand
> both. Any coherent materialism does not claim that all phenomena are
> entirely physical - for if it did even absolute idealism could claim
> to be a materialism - instead it must claim that there are non-mental
> and non-experiential phenomena as well as mental or experiential
> phenomena and that in a materialist position each mental or experiential
> phenomena MUST ALSO have a non-mental or non-experiential
> phenomena as part of its make up. Coherent idealism holds the reverse
> to be true. Materialism thus holds that every event has a non-mental,
> non-experiential aspect, WHETHER OR NOT it also has mental or
> experiential being.
Gulp. Wish I understood this.Why do it so horribly difficult? Let me
have a go at it: Idealism claims that the primary reality is mind,
and that what we perceive as matter is an illusion, while the
materialist claims that mind is a fallout of the material workings.
None of the two SOM parties rejects the other reality, but only claim
that mind or matter - respectively - is the PRIMARY reality
> In MoQ terms there is therefore no difficulty in seeing mysticism as
> a subset of materialism which is itself, in turn, a subset of the MoQ.
I sense that you say something important here. If it is that both
materialism and idealism is a subset of the MOQ - as objectivism and
subjectivism respectively, I agree, but the meaning of ....mysticism
as a subset of materialism still eludes me.
Bodvar
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