From: Case (Case@iSpots.com)
Date: Wed Oct 05 2005 - 16:31:46 BST
[Case]
I sympathize with selective reading. I have a very hard time keeping up with
the various conversations and have totally given up on reading archives
unless someone points out something specific to review. Having said that, I
empathize with Skinner's pigeons in that I find myself clicking send/receive
on my Outlook toolbar about 50 times a day. I am may actually look for
software to help me graph this.
As far as the levels business goes I am talking about the four Static
levels, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. As I mention
somewhere else I took this to be Pirsig test driving the MoQ not the final
word. On the one hand he simply reiterates the way subjects are laid out in
most college catalogs which is fine. But when he claims they are discrete
from one another this does not ring true to me at all. Furthermore his
purpose is to interject a moral order by way of this heirarchy. I would be
delighted to discuss how one can derive a moral order from the study of
science through the apprehension of Quality but I don't think the four
levels is the proper route.
I risk sounding like a broken record here but since no one has seen fit to
notice I will just keep on skipping, keeping on skipping, keep on
skipping... Quality is the undefined term in MoQ. I have issues of emphasis
with Pirsig's nondefinition but setting those aside for the moment, the big
problem is DQ. The conflation of Quality with DQ does begin with Pirsig. I
can excuse him because I believe his misuse of the term is usually a matter
of rhetorical convenience or perhaps it is because he did not anticipate
contemporary advances in math and science that made definition of DQ
possible. In almost every instance were DQ makes sense, it sounds to a
westerner like Chaos. Defined this way DQ fits nicely into oriental schools
of thought as well. It is the active aspect, Yang.
The MoQ's value for me is in the way it is able to resolve dualism into
monism and show how dualistic poles function. This may be idiosyncratic but
I find dualisms everywhere and from binary math to adjusting my thermostat.
Leaving DQ undefined and talking in mystical reverential terms, results in a
kind of one legged dualism; or if you will, the sound of one hand clapping.
I think the MoQ becomes powerful when one starts to see the world as mix of
flux and stasis. One sees that order is a natural consequence of chaos and
that the conditions under which it develops are ones in which various forces
are balanced just so. This way of viewing the MoQ reveals striking
similarity between the way the ideas and concepts gell internally into
systems of thought and mental organization and the way the biological
systems respond to change, social structures evolve and inorganic systems
interact. I suspect for example that the MoQ could be very useful in showing
the relationship of memetics to genetics.
Until this matter is resolved I see the MoQ stagnating. Having two undefined
terms in a vocabulary of only four words is not productive in my view.
As for the inner and outer issue. I am of course using them as code words
for SOM. Although Pirsig shows obvious distain for SOM I believe he claims
to have illuminiated not eliminated it. I do think there are hard
distinctions between subject and objects. But I would maintain that there is
only one subject in SOM and that would be me. You may have your own SOM
where the subject is you but I think any SOM that includes a plural for
subject is way off base from the get go.
So I guess the question that remains is how much trouble have I gotten
myself into?
[Matt]
> I mainly don't read other people's conversations these days, but every
> once in a while, for whatever reason (usually impulse), I take a quick
> look to see what's going on. We had a touch a week ago or something and
> it looked like we were basically saying the same thing there. Reading
> this post (Oct 4th to Bo), I stumbled on more that seems very similar to
> the kind of thing I've been going on about (like in "the cul de sac of
> philosophy and mysticism"). In particular, I like these lines:
>
> "I am saying the very notion that these levels are discrete from one
> another and that they operate independantly from one another is rubbish."
>
> Being as I haven't followed the conversation (and I don't have a lot of
> time to get up to speed), I'm not particularly sure how specific you're
> being with "these levels," but any general attack on Pirsig's notion of
> discreteness I can appreciate.
>
> "Discussions about our internal private worlds are not very productive
> because we have no basis for agreeing or disagreeing."
>
> "My knowledge of what goes on in my wife's head is totally dependant on
> what she tells me about it. Beyond her reports and her behavior I have
> have no way to independently verify the her claims."
>
> I think this is a very important realization about the lack of criteria in
> this area of inquiry.
>
> "Most conflate DQ and Quality. This makes no sense to me at all."
>
> The most important reason for this conflation is that Pirsig makes it. I
> talk about this conflation and the problems it engenders a little bit in
> my review of Anthony's (very old) paper at moq.org.
>
> All that being said, one suggestion I would make is actually of the
> dropping of the inner/outer distinction. You have to use it to a certain
> extent to enunciate the problems you've identified with justification of
> "inner states" and the like (mainly because criticisms such as the ones
> you're making are parasitic on the language your opponent is using), but
> you mentioned to Bo that you take it as a matter of principle, but I think
> in the long run it too will get you into trouble. In the long run, if you
> take the behavioristic route you've been traveling, you'll want to
> collapse the distinction by saying that, once something has become
> sufficiently complex, we are want to ascribe them what we call "inner
> states," which are defined as "states that we are not privy to." This is
> basically one of the "soft distinctions" we pragmatically make to deal
> with the world. That makes saying "I see the inner/outer separation as a
> matter of principle," as you did to Bo, a little misleading. And I have a
> feeling you'd be perfectly content to drop it in this sense.
>
> Matt
>
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