From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 21:29:44 BST
Hi Bo,
>Hi Johnny
>31 July you wrote:
>
> > I'm not prepared to address your "SOM Idealism" concept (I thought the
> > two were exclusive) and was also confused by your "Idealism =
> > Subjective" statement in your last post to Joe. Could you explain the
> > "half" of SOM that is idealism to me, please?
>
>We have the idealism/materialism camps, which says respectively that
>mind creates matter or matter creates mind. The "create" term
>perhaps sounds a bit "magical", so there are a lot of more lenient
>varieties f.ex. scientific materialism that merely says that when matter
>(nerve systems in this case) gets complex enough it starts generating
>an illusion of consciousness. What the more "lenient" idealists say I
>haven't a ready example of, but not to get lost the gist of it is that the
>idealist/materialist chasm is a fall-out of the mind/matter enigma which
>is the fall-out of the mother lode: Subject/Object Metaphysics.
I see what you are saying. But I don't think Idealism is the same as
subjective reality, or that Idealism is "all in the mind", though that would
be an SOM way of (mis)seeing it. Aren't the Ideals of Idealism usually
thought to be in "God" (Berkely, Edwards) or in Morality (Pirsig, Edwards),
and manifest both the mind and the world the mind experiences?
> > But regarding the Pirsig quote I have a big question. He says the
> > objects grow out of ideas, not the other way around. Where do these
> > ideas come from. Why do I have the idea that the Eiffel Tower is in
> > Paris? If I go there, I suppose I will see it, and it will look like
> > the idea I have of it, and grow out of the idea. What if I had no
> > idea about it, had never even heard of the Eiffel Tower, and went to
> > Paris. Would I not also see it, same as if I had the idea?
>
>Johnny, I'm NOT with Pirsig here, but let me repeat that it is SOM
>which is the source of the enigma (if the Eiffel Tower is a figment of
>our mind or if the physical tower imprints itself on the our senses and
>creates an image in our mind). A silly notion that every toddler know is
>idiocy, yet before the MOQ pointed to a SOM nobody knew of any
>SOM and everybody was forced into believing that reality was split
>from the start in this subjective/objective way ...For the religious
>...something God had built into his creation for us to ponder his
>mysterious ways. This still applies, except for this small group no-one
>know of any SOM ;-)
>
>This is why I am so exasperated by the annotating Pirsig. Why does
>he not heed his own MOQ? Follow my reasoning: After having
>reached at the Quality conclusion: That Value is the innermost reality
>which in the known manner gives rise to the static hierarchy which at
>the intellectual stage divides reality in the said S/O way ..... After
>this
>solid metaphysical groundwork to start about "objects growing out of
>ideas ..etc." is to return to SOM's idealist position which is just as
>poisonous as the materialist to the MOQ. Why does Pirsig do this?
I was hoping to address where ideas come from, cause I think you are stuck
thinking that they come from the mind. The ideas don't come randomly from a
person's head. The idea of the Eiffel Tower is a static pattern that exists
in Morality. Morality then creates the heads (also static patterns - it
creates the heads via the patterns of people giving birth and education) and
also the ideas the heads have, including the Eiffel Tower that is
experienced as real. That's why we all see the Eiffel Tower when we look
there, because there is one Morality. Subjectivism comes because a single
pattern (us) does not interact with all the other patterns that exist in
Morality, but only those that it is morally has to interact with. So we
have incomplete subjective views of reality, but still views that come from
the one morality and must be consistent with it.
>I have wondered ever since this group started to throw the LC
>annotations around. I found the said # 102 in which it sounds like a
>strategy to get the MOQ aligned with Quantum Physics, but as said
>find more of this "all in our mind" stuff in LC - most pronounced as in
>the # 37
>
>* "Anders is slipping into the materialist assumption that thre is a
> huge world out there that has nothing to do with people. The
> MOQ says that this is a high quality assumption, within limits. one
> of its is that without humans to make it, that assumption cannot
> be made. It is a human specific assumption. Strictly speaking
> Anders have never heard of and will never hear of anything that
> isn't human specific."
>
>Materialist?! As if THAT is any threat to the Q-idea? The idealist view
>that Pirsig himself brings is doubly harmful. He does not say "in our
>mind", but "human specific" spells the same. Maybe I lose you here
>Johnny, but it all relates to the definition of intellectual level as
>"mind/thinking" and that the MOQ is an intellectual pattern, i.e: "in our
>minds" ....and why I so vehemently opposes that definition and
>maintains that intellect is the S/O divide itself!
I'm not sure human specific spells the same as in our mind. Again, it has
to do with the origin of the pattern or assumption (expectation?). In our
mind sounds like "we make it up without regard for anything" and "human
specific" seems to mean that the patterns of Morality are a human morality,
shared patterns only among humans.
>One last criticism of the above annotation: Here Pirsig [after his own
>great insight that Value creates the mind/matter universe) re-
>introduces the mind half in the "human specific" or "everything human
>assumptions" forms ...If so THEN "human assumptions" is a new
>innermost reality and he may as well make a "Meatphysics of Human
>Assumptions": Dynamic Human Assumptions and Static Human
>Assumptions of which the first is "Inorganic Human Assumption"
>...and so on. which is good enough but QUALITY IS BETTER!!
I agree, Morality is better.
>Conclusion: The Eiffel Tower's reality enigma is a SOM figment, but
>why Pirsig keeps talking the way he does in LC has become the new
>enigma. However, this sentence (from # 102) sets everything straight
> >"Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed always
> >involves an interaction with ideas that have been previously
>assumed"
>
>Sincerely
>Bo
Again it's DQ to the rescue from every conundrum. I think the thing that
sets everything straight is to recognize where ideas come from.
Johnny
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