Hi Bodvar and LilaQs,
Bodvar Skutnik wrote on 7 Jan 1999:
<<<This was an interesting method of editing a post, maybe it's the
way to make it through the maze. I know that my own collective
sweep-ups makes it hard to follow threads (as Maggie pointed out),
but I don't really know what else to do except delivering five or ten
messages a day. From your excellent post I will only extract this
portion because it highlights our difference that I believe (?) is in
the process of being resolved. Phew! >>>
Thanks for the compliment. The cross-referencing method I
demonstrated before is terribly laborious, so excuse me for sometimes
omitting it here. On the more substantive issues, I'm pleased to agree
that we may be close to resolution
<<<my thesis is that Intellect (capital 'I' means Q-intellect) is SO
itself, it can't be "persuaded" to accept a new non-SO division; the
MOQ must be something trying to escape the limitations of Intellect.>>>
I get the point, but I don't think anyone really thinks like that.
Einstein said:
"The intellect has little to do on the road
to discovery. There comes a leap in
consciousness, call it Intuition or what
you will, the solution comes to you and
you don't know how or why."
That's a major theme of my forum essay "Zen and the Art of Science"
which I have now put on my own web site at
http://indycc1.agri.huji.ac.il/~marder/Science_Philosophy/Zen.htm
prefaced with the Einstein quote.
BODVAR
<<<I have admitted that I don't have Pirsig's approval of my
SOLAQI, but are you saying here that mind-matter is NOT part of the
subject-object complex? Objections my honor! M-m is one of the
innumerable offshoots of the primary split (somewhere P. even calls
SOM "mind-matter metaphysics"). That is why I feel it wrong (by
Pirsig) to equate Intellect with "the mental" knowing the heavy SOM
load this expression carries (mental-corporeal). In the same letter
to Anthony he also said that the term "mind" should better be
avoided. But to "avoid" S-O is next to impossible.>>>
I agree that Pirsig says that the Cartesian Mind-Matter split goes
hand-in-hand with SOM. That's why he avoids using the terms. But I think
there are other formulations of M-M which are not necessarily SOM.
<<<No, I maintain that only by seeing whole S/O complex ....including
mind-matter, mental-corporeal, psychic-physical, soul-body etc.....as
the Intellectual level of the MOQ the paradoxes are removed.>>>
If ALL is based on matter, then mind is also based on matter. That's why
mind-matter sounds so much like SOM. MIND is the matter which functions
as SUBJECT, MATTER is the matter which functions as OBJECT.
Let me suggest a new formulation by which matter remains, but MIND is
regarded as a process.
Mind - thinking - intellect are processes ... processing OF something.
That's why I regard Intellect as something different from the 3
"material" levels (see my post of 7th Dec at
http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/9812/0049.html ). Those
levels just *are*, or *do* whatever mind perceives them to do, and that
perception is the process of intellect! I fully concede that this is a
mind-matter approach, but this only becomes SOM when one regards mind as
material (i.e. subject).
I feel on shaky ground trying to discuss all this in words because
words quite simply fail. That's why I fall between the mystics and the
materialists. The materialists say that reality is *material* reality.
That leads to the SOM position that mind (subject) is material -
otherwise mind isn't real and doesn't "really" exist. The mystics say
that
the things we perceive aren't real anyway so "true" reality is something
else and hidden.
With Pirsig's help (IMHO) I want to take the middle road - what we
perceive IS reality (or an Image of it),
but the non-material perception process is also real. To say something
like this requires an expansion of our definitions of words like
"reality" and "existence". Otherwise it sounds like total rubbish.
It seems that I've left myself open to some serious attack here. What do
you think Bodvar? (Others?)
Jonathan B. Marder <MARDER@agri.huji.ac.il>
Department of Agricultural Botany, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Faculty of Agriculture, P.O.Box 12, Rehovot 76100, ISRAEL
Phone: +972 8 9481918 Fax: +972 8 9467763
Web page: http://www.agri.huji.ac.il/~marder
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