From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Jun 13 2005 - 11:02:43 BST
Matt and Coalition Partners.
I take the liberty to change the subject of this discussion that has
moved away from both the "bolstering" and "primary" ones.
On 12 June Matt Kundert wrote:
> Is it just me, or are DMB, Paul, Anthony, and I all working together,
> working the same side?
Yes, some strange coalitions have occurred and disappeared
throughout this discussion. But again I must thank you for a most
thorough review of the SOL position, I have read it most
thoroughly too. It is of course a crime not to comment everything
but you know ...pearls before swine?
> A summary of the position that I believe all four of us stand
> in/with/as: What we call "mind" is better refered to as a collection
> of static intellectual patterns.
But "mind" is part of the mind/matter dualism of SOM which is
replaced by MOQ's DynamicStatic dualism, thus making the
intellectual level equal to mind is the source of all ills. This Pirsig
gradually came to realize and in the letter to Paul he forcefully
rejected it. But his reparation ...the manipulation of symbols
definition .. only came halfway to you know what. Intellect is the
realization that there is a symbol/what is symbolized difference
The absence what is what characterizes SOCIAL existence. To a
Muslim the words in the Koran do not symbolize anything they
are God speaking to them.
> A person does not _have_
> intellectual patterns, we _are_ intellectual patterns. A "person" is
> a particular amalgamation of static intellectual patterns, the vast
> majority of which we share with other people.
OK, no objection to this or the rest of this "chapter".
> So far I've run through (what I take to be) the common denominator of
> Anthony, DMB, Paul, and my's recent arguments in the recent
> conversations with Bo and Ham. The principle place where this turns
> into an argument against Bo is when Anthony and I wonder where the MoQ
> exists, what it is. As Anthony says, "if you retain SOL, I think you
> have to explain where the MOQ (which is an intellectual map of
> reality) metaphysically fits within itself." A kind of reply is when
> Bo says that, "A theory does not reside anywhere within itself.
> Newton's Physics postulates a physical reality subject to its laws,
> but is nowhere inside this reality. Thus the MOQ - or the SOL
> interpretation of it - is nowhere inside the MOQ; it is the Quality
> Reality!"
Thanks for noticing
> This is Bo sounding like an idealist, while trying to foist that label
> on us.
If anything uttered by language are ideas, we certainly are
idealists and idealism rules, but even the most rabid idealists
shies this linguistic "black hole" and postulate something that
language reflects ...which makes idealism part of the SOM - or of
the intellectual level!
> Bo does go on directly after that to say, "The S/O Metaphysics
> however has such an enormous (gravity) pull that people automatically
> see thinking as taking place in the mind of the mind/matter reality."
Again thanks for noticing.
> So Bo clearly doesn't want to be regarded as an idealist. But that
> leaves us with the question that becomes more and more pressing--what
> is the MoQ? Bo answers with a sharp divide between theory and
> reality, that a theory doesn't reside within what it purports to
> describe. But this immediately becomes queer looking when what we are
> talking about are general theories of reality. How could it not
> contain itself and then claim to have described reality? Newton's
> physics never had a problem with this because it didn't itself purport
> to describe all of reality (maybe not historically true, but the
> practice of physicists (a class subsequently created after Newton to
> differentiate themselves from the "natural philosophers" they once
> were) has never bothered to worry about what their theories are
> themselves). However, it did cause a problem for _philosophers_ who
> wanted to use Newton and the New Science as the platform for a new
> general theory of reality. These philosophers became, eventually,
> known as logical positivists.
Most well-founded observations, but I don't postulate "a sharp
divide" between a metaphysics and reality. I say that the MOQ is
the Quality Reality. Look. SOM was the S/O reality and the first
move by Pirsig was to point to it, split it from reality, and the first
reactions (from the few who noticed) were to deny a SOM
...which proves my point: it WAS reality itself. The S/O reality.
> Logical positivism eventually fell into complete failure as a program
> because of the exact problem Bo is facing: what is the theory itself?
> Pirsig skips lightly over what actually brought down logical
> positivism as a philosophical program (which isn't that big a deal
> because the remenants of positivism still reside in our philosophical
> culture and they still need a wider ranging critque, or really,
> alternative that Pirsig offers), but he does (I think) knowingly
> allude to it. (I don't have Lila with me, mind you, so I can't
> directly quote or refer.) At the beginning of one of the earlier
> chapters of Lila, Pirsig begins by talking about the tests of truth.
> Right after that, Pirsig announces that the MoQ not only passes the
> logical positivists criteria truthfulness, it does better than logical
> positivism. The key word Pirsig uses that alludes to the downfall of
> positivism is "verifiability" (and its derivations). The logical
> positivists, principally in A. J. Ayer's formulation of the Vienna
> Circle's spin on something Wittgenstein said in passing in
> conversation (which, upon seeing the Circle's spin, he denounced),
> said that the criteria of meaningfulness is verifiability. If it can
> be verified, it is cognitively meaningful. This is what they used to
> shunt religion, ethics, and art to the side as "meaningless."
> However, the critique that was pressed on them was: how is the
> principle of verifiability verified? Because it was quite apparent
> that, from the positivists formulation of the principle, it couldn't
> be. So the whole program of logical positivism as forwarding a
> general theory of reality was shut down (for a number of other
> reasons, also, mind you, but I think this was the first big push).
Most impressive, but as you say about Newton, his theory limited
itself to physics, he acknowledged the metaphysical
psychic/physical divide (hardly knew that it was a metaphysics).
Thus whoever hailed or criticized him were all true SOMists.
> So, where/what is the SOL-MoQ? DMB, Paul, Anthony, and I do just fine
> by first denying that a theory cannot contain itself.
"Theory" sounds a bit innocent, no-one has challenged SOM --
identified a SOM - before Pirsig. Even Kant started with S/O
premises and ended with them. I don't try to outwrite you in
philosophy history, but if called upon ;-)
> After all, what
> is a theory but a string of words and anybody can look into a
> dictionary and find that words contain themselves in an innocuous
> sense that we can handle.
Watch out. Don't come too near the language black hole!
> For the four of us, the MoQ is an
> intellectual pattern.
If Pirsig's container logic is valid it is grossly violated here.
> It is that particular kind of intellectual
> pattern that principally refers to other intellectual patterns, that
> kind of pattern we call "philosophy." But in your SOL-MoQ, the
> SOL-MoQ itself seems to come to replace reality. But that doesn't
> seem to make sense except as a kind of idealism. Not only that, but
> it should remind us of Pirsig's snide comment about being handed a
> menu without any food.
Well, to repeat myself SOM was once taken for granted (and still
is by 99,99% of the Western population) Can you Matt show me
anyone referring to a subject/object metaphysics , I mean in the
sense of it having an origin and maybe a exit? There were
certainly plenty thinkers who lamented the enigma; why reality
was thus divided; why we are locked inside our mind with no
hope of knowing the "Ding an Sich", but not putting the bell on
the cat like Pirsig did.
> The problem that you are going to face, I think, is that it is
> perfectly and logically sound and safe to make a distinction in levels
> between the MoQ and the intellectual level/SOL. This would make the
> MoQ a fifth level. Philosophers have always made this kind of move to
> guard themselves against self-reference, but then they've always
> fallen towards infinite regress when they do.
As said I have dropped the 5th. level notion, I saw its weakness.
The four static levels are "surrounded" by the Quality Reality. I
see no logical flaw here, except asking as some do what is
outside the universe.
> None of this, however,
> is the problem. The problem is that each distinction in level you
> make between what you are talking about and how you are talking about
> it (which could go on forever) looks more and more like the last one.
> And the more that happens, the more artificial the distinction looks.
> The more artificial it looks, the more we are apt to invoke economy of
> explanation to shut down the procedure. Philosophy prides itself on
> explaining as much as it can in as short a space as possible. But
> these twin imperatives breed the problems of self-reference (when
> you've not explained enough) and infinite regress (when you're taking
> too much space to explain). The idea of the pragmatist vision of
> philosophy, the vision that Pirsig takes part in, is to balance the
> two directives to help the living of life. One can push any
> philosophy hard enough to self-reference or to infinite regress. The
> trick, though, is to get it to stop being useful.
This and the rest is Matt as we know him ;-) but I believe we have
a dialogue and I am still impressed that you took the pains.
Bo
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