From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Oct 12 2004 - 14:46:18 BST
Steve,
> Steve:
> The MOQ considers intellect subjective. I'm not sure what your
> complaint is about the place for intellect within Pirsig's MOQ. I'm
> sure you've been through this before, but would you mind summarizing
> your view?
[Scott:] The MOQ considers intellect to be the fourth level of SQ, and in
later notes, Pirsig defines intellect as the manipulation of abstract
symbols. Further, the self is defined as inorganic, biological, social, and
intellectual SQ capable of responding to DQ. Now, what is DQ? The MOQ says
it should be undefined, but it seems to me one can say a couple of things
about it. One is that it is creativity, that it drives evolution -- it, and
only it leaves new SQ behind. The other is that it is one, that is, there
is not a DQ for the inorganic level, another for the biological, not one
for Earth, and another for Mars, and so on. Now this may sound like I am
reifying DQ, making it sound too much like God, but as I see it that is
already implied in defining the self as capable of responding to DQ, rather
being itself DQ and SQ. And it seems to deny creativity to the self, and
that is what I object to.
A difference between the intellectual level and the other levels is that I
can only observe the SQ of the other levels, but I can make SQ on the
intellectual level. To some extent I have control of the SQ that my mind
churns out. Obviously not complete control, in that a great deal of time my
mind seems to be running on automatic. But I can be more or less mindful,
which pretty much means being more or less in control. These words that I
am typing out are new SQ. Not earth-shaking, to be sure, like "e=mc^2", but
new nevertheless, and not completely new, since I am mostly just putting
old ideas in new words. Nevertheless, what I type could be radically new
SQ, a new mathematical proof, a new philosophy, a new poem, a new
scientific hypothesis. Thus, as I see it, when we are being creative, we
are DQ. And, since we can examine and change our own SQ (our beliefs and
desires). we are self-evolving.
Now the question is, is what I am saying just a different way of saying
that I am responding to DQ. Am I just introducing confusion to make a point
that has no great significance. Well, obviously I don't think so. The
reason I don't think so is that if we ignore our own creativity we are
ignoring our ability to see DQ and SQ actually creating. Our own minds are
creating and letting us view creation. We have got the basic MOQ principle
in microcosm right here in our minds.
However, the microcosmic MOQ of the self only applies to the intellectual
level (I can only create intellectual SQ). So a question may be raised on
whether it has anything to say about how the MOQ works on the other levels.
I say that it does, for a couple of reasons. The first is that SQ consists
of static patterns of value, and the difference between a pattern and a
thing or event that instantiates the pattern is the old philosophical
distinction between universals and particulars, and that is what intellect
works with. This means that one needs to add particulars to the MOQ. That
can be done by using Peirce's triads. For Peirce, any event is a
sign-event, by which he means there is a particular, a universal which that
particular instantiates, and an interpretant, which recognizes the
universal that the particular instantiates. Unless all three are present
there is no meaning, no value. Now to reconcile this with the MOQ's
position that value precedes any differentiation, one also observes that
without value, there is no triad. That is, this is consistent with saying
that value creates the triad.
The second reason is in response to the objection that in the MOQ, Reality
is an undivided whole, and that it is intellect that makes divisions,
resulting in menus and not food. To this I reply that without divisions
there is no reality. Here is where the Copernican Inversion needs to go
another step. Human intellect makes divisions, and thereby creates
realities, called language games. So does DQ, only we call it inorganic,
biological, and social reality. Inorganic reality results by choosing
certain physical laws, and within the confines of those laws, inorganic
reality takes place. Same with the rest. In other words, creation is
differentiation, the setting of limits, which limits are SQ. DQ breaks up
old limits and sets new limits. That's Intellect.
> Steve:
> does this mean that you don't like Pirsig's DQ as the leading edge of
> experience which creates sq?
See below, on a problem with DQ.
[Scott prev:]>> plus the observation that Quality is
>> meaningless without appreciation of value.
> This is the SOM assumption anyway...
SOM assumes that there is a subject that appreciates an object. I am only
assuming appreciation, and that it is better to think of it, as Pirsig puts
it, as between the subject and the object, or among the nodes of the
Peircean triad. The point of bringing it up is that to get appreciation,
*some* differentiating is necessary, however we might describe it.
>
[Scott prev:]> > That does not mean that humans
> > are the only appreciators. In fact, in the end what one gets is that
> > Quality is its own appreciation. To put this all together, I suggest
> > that
> > what Quality divides into (conceptually) is a triad (sign, pattern, and
> > interpretant), not a dyad (subject and object, or dynamic and static),
> Steve:
> Pirsig suggests that there are lots of ways one can create a
> metaphysics of quality...
>
> "A subject-object metaphysics is in fact a metaphysics in which the
> first division of Quality-the first slice of undivided experience-is into
> subjects and objects. Once you have made that slice, all of human
> experience is supposed to fit into one of these two boxes. The trouble
> is, it doesn't. What he had seen is that there is a metaphysical box that
> sits above these two boxes, Quality itself. And once he'd seen this he
also
> saw a huge number of ways in which Quality can be divided. Subjects and
> objects are just one of the ways.
>
> The question was, which way was best?"
>
> To me, your way sounds the same as SOM.
That's because you have not grasped the idea that, while we differentiate
(e.g., into subjects and objects, or into triads) to understand reality,
Quality differentiates to create reality. Intellect, like Quality, precedes
any particular differentiation.
> Can you explain where the dq/sq cut fits in with your triad?
No, because DQ seems to me to be used in two different ways (which I want
to examine in a separate thread), as the creation of new SQ, and as the
leading edge of experience. Is there DQ when I am running on automatic? I
accept that metaphysically the DQ/SQ split is of utmost importance, since
that is the basis of morality.
- Scott
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