From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Sep 13 2003 - 18:03:59 BST
Paul,
You end this post with:
> In a nutshell, it seems to me that trying to bring Coleridge/Barfield
> and Pirsig together doesn't work and doesn't help in understanding the
> vocabulary of either.
>
I think I agree. I also think that Coleridge/Barfield's metaphysics is the
one I need to work with, and not Pirsig's. I'll state my reasoning here as
to why this is the case for me, but I am not at this point trying to give a
detailed argument for others. That will have to wait, probably for an essay,
since it would require a point by point comparison of the reasoning of both
Barfield and Pirsig. Don't know whether I'll ever get around to it.
In any case, my interest is in the mind. Pirsig puts the mind as the fourth
static level. That means, I take it, that not only the products of mental
activity (i.e., thoughts) are static, but that mental processes (ie,
thinking) are also static. So if I am studying the mind, we have a static
process in the form of a subject studying an object, which is mind studying
mind. But in the MOQ, the mind is not an object, so this phraseology is
disallowed. This seems like needless obfuscation, as it is readily used by
other philosophers, SOM and non-SOM.
But worse than this is that there is no creativity allowed for me (or for
Shakespeare, for that matter), since all creativity, that is, the production
of new static patterns of value, is assigned to DQ. Thus, the MOQ seems to
be on a par with Calvinist predestination. While there is some esoteric
truth to this, I believe, I also believe it is not the whole truth. The
whole truth is that the little self *is* (and is not) the Big Self, that our
sense of freedom is and is not an illusion. The MOQ only points to the "is".
We need Coleridge/Barfield/Nishida to point to "is *yet* is not".
Thus I see the need to say that the mind is the locus of DQ/SQ tension in a
human being. You object that this is a return to idealism, because the MOQ
states that the mind is just a fourth level of static patterns, as on the
other three levels, while I am distinguishing mental activity from static
patterns on four levels. I would say instead that, in order to say that we
are in the slightest degree free, we must recognize DQ (in tension with SQ)
as mental activity. I see it as no more idealist than the MOQ is, since it
is moving concepts like "awareness" and "thinking" out of the subject to the
source of both subject and object, as the MOQ does with "Quality". If they
are to be kept within the fourth static level, then Quality becomes a
transcendent God, not an immanent/transcendent one, and we are no more than
automatons, or perhaps Pavlovian dogs, conditionable by value, but not
producers of value.
Or perhaps one can say that the MOQ is consistent with Theravadin Buddhism
(go for Nirvana/DQ), but not Mahayana Buddhism (nirvana is samsara), but
since Zen is Mahayana, that speaks to more confusion in the MOQ.
- Scott
-----Original message-----
> I have written a separate post concerning your application of the logic
> of contradictory identity to the MOQ. I am aware that this is an
> integral part of your understanding as a whole but in this post I have
> tried to pick up on what I see as an idealist theme in your reworking of
> the MOQ.
>
> > Paul:
> > See, here is something I'd like to go into:
> >
> > "But with the demotion of the S/O divide to a static pattern of
> > intellectual quality one loses the ability to integrate Pirsig with
> > Barfield."
> >
> > I was trying to discuss how the S/O divide is laid out in the MOQ to
> > see if we agree on that for a start. I don't think we do.
>
> Scott:
> In the MOQ, it is called a static pattern of intellectual quality, no?
>
> Paul:
> In the MOQ, the symbolic differentiation of experience between subject
> and object is a static intellectual pattern. The patterns of experience
> which the symbols of subject and object stand for are described by the
> MOQ as inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual. In other words,
> experience is not limited to and is not solely created by intellectual
> patterns.
>
> Scott:
> That
> is what I am proceeding from, and objecting to. It makes it sound as
> though somebody a few millenia ago had the *thought* "I am a subject and
> I observe objects", and everybody else said "That's a great thought".
>
> Paul:
> It shouldn't make it sound like that. The intellectual level, according
> to Pirsig's definition, did not just spring into existence with the S/O
> divide. It is simply thinking, whenever thinking started in whatever
> way, this is the beginning of the intellect. Determining the exact
> beginning is, I believe, unnecessary.
>
> Scott:
> Reading
> Barfield, one understands that people for a long time could not have
> this thought becuase they *were not* subjects opposed to a world of
> objects. They did not have their own thoughts at all.. But consciousness
> evolved into the S/O form, producing the intellectual level.
>
> Paul:
> "But consciousness evolved into the S/O form, producing the intellectual
> level."
>
> This is the same as Bo, along the lines of....my interpretation of the
> MOQ is that the intellectual level begins with the S/O form, I therefore
> conclude that....
>
> Scott:
> Something that produces the
> intellectual level cannot be a static pattern of the intellectual level.
>
> Paul:
> Your interpretation causes the problem! Pirsig is clear that, in the
> MOQ, any experience referred to as consciousness is to be considered as
> intellectual patterns. Neither consciousness nor the S/O divide created
> the intellectual level. Pirsig proposes that Dynamic Quality created
> intellect/consciousness.
>
> "...the MOQ states that consciousness (i.e. intellectual patterns) is
> the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that
> stand for patterns of experience..." [Lila's Child Note 32]
>
> This makes no reference whatsoever to whether or not the intellectual
> patterns must include a concept of "self" or "thinker". If you think
> this is inadequate, ill-conceived, confusing, illogical, and that
> another model is better, then fine, we discuss that. However, to avoid
> confusion [mine, at the very least], please be clear when you are using
> MOQ terminology [such as "intellectual level"] in a way that is contrary
> to Pirsig's published definitions.
>
> > Scott:
> > Furthermore, since the S/O form is so familiar to us (it *is* us as we
>
> > see ourselves in our fallen state), it is our avenue to
> > understanding/not-understanding DQ/SQ. As I said a while back, while
> > the MOQ gets rid of a lot of SOM dualist platypi, it does not get rid
> > of the many/one dualism.
> >
> > Paul:
> > No, it invokes it. And it says that S/O is a further division of the
> > many.
>
> Scott:
> And there it goes wrong. The S/O divide is the simultaneous creation of
> the one into the many, and the return of the many to the one.
>
> Paul:
> I disagree, subjects and objects are just ways of describing "the many".
> I think that the enduring subject, the self, is as much an abstraction
> from patterns of experience as the supposedly independent objects. I
> think your failure to discriminate between "subject" [static] and what
> you call "pure subject" [Dynamic] leads to problems which don't
> otherwise come up in the MOQ.
>
> Scott:
> Thinking, however, is not an object. It
> is the S/O divide, and hence a case of the DQ/SQ divide.
>
> Paul:
> Well, this is what we are discussing. You say it as if it is a given. In
> the MOQ, and in my opinion, the S/O divide is not a case of the DQ/SQ
> division. This is idealism, the MOQ is not an idealist metaphysics.
>
> Scott:
> The value of the
> S/O divide is the divide, as Bo has said. We naturally place the
> inorganic and biological on the O side, and that lets us be detached
> from them, allowing for science, and so forth. The next step is to
> detach ourselves from social and intellectual SQ, to move them over to
> the O side as well, to see that my thoughts are not me, but society's or
> when truly detached, are
> universal (as in mathematics). All that is left, then, is S as DQ. But
> see above on Merrell-Wolff.
>
> Paul:
> Okay, to put this in Buddhist terms, I think you are unnecessarily
> conflating particular or small mind (static intellectual quality) with
> universal or big mind (Dynamic Quality). In doing so I think you
> postulate an idealist metaphysics. The use of the terms "intellectual
> quality" and "Dynamic Quality" is intended to prevent such conflation by
> doing away with the word "mind" and the vagueness that comes with its
> use. Barfield also conflates the two, which is no coincidence of course
> :-)
>
> "..mind or consciousness is not the function of an organ, though it
> makes use of organs, the brain among others...it is not a mysterious
> something spatially encapsulated within a human or animal skin, but it
> is the inner side of the world as a whole, just as the individual mind
> is the inside of one human being." [Barfield, Towards]
>
> This is where I think Barfield and Pirsig differ and where you have to
> make the choice between the two. Pirsig reduces mind into value.
> Barfield [and Coleridge?] seems to reduce mind into...well, bigger,
> collective mind?
>
> > Paul:
> > As I have tried to explain, I don't think the MOQ does reject subjects
>
> > and objects, I think it embeds them into a larger metaphysical
> > structure as static quality. In doing so, the difference between them
> > is resolved into an evolutionary relationship. Pirsig just believes
> > that there are better ways to talk about and understand static
> > experience than subjects and objects, as four evolutionary levels is
> > one way; the MOQ doesn't just pretend the experience isn't there. This
>
> > is why I want to try and stay on the problem side of the discussion
> > before jumping into solutions.
>
> Scott:
> I too am embedding them into a larger metaphysical structure, but as a
> case of DQ/SQ, not as static quality. One's descriptions are, to be
> sure, static, but one's describing isn't. Thinking is traditionally
> assigned to the subject, but is not static. Thinking is S-producing-O,
> DQ-producing SQ.
>
> Paul:
> In an idealist metaphysics it is, but not in the MOQ. [I think the
> difference between idealism and the MOQ is worth discussing though]. It
> must be remembered that Dynamic Quality is not "mind" or
> "consciousness".
>
> > Paul:
> > Okay, where does this leave the MOQ? What does it look like after such
>
> > a transformation? DQ/SQ at the intellectual level is synonymous with
> > S/O?
>
> Scott:
> The MOQ accounts for moral conflicts beautifully, but I have to admit
> that I find Coleridge's philosophy (as described by Barfield) provides a
> philosophy of mind and nature (which turn out to be the same, operating
> on different
> levels) that is more comprehensive that Pirsig's. The main point is
> there in
> Pirsig: Quality, and the DQ/SQ distinction being the same as Coleridge's
> "two forces of one power", but one needs to see that S/O is a case of
> those two forces to see that our ordinary minds work the same way that
> nature works, and more importantly, that nature works the same way our
> minds work.
>
> Paul:
> The point of the DQ/SQ distinction is that "mind" [static intellectual
> patterns] and "nature" [static inorganic-biological patterns] arise from
> something which is neither mind nor nature [Dynamic Quality]. So
> although in a Dynamic understanding they are the same
> [undifferentiated], in a static sense they are different patterns. As
> such, as no static differentiation carries over into Dynamic Quality, I
> think that seeing thinking, or "subject" [static intellectual patterns]
> as synonymous with Dynamic Quality defeats the purpose of the division.
>
> In a nutshell, it seems to me that trying to bring Coleridge/Barfield
> and Pirsig together doesn't work and doesn't help in understanding the
> vocabulary of either.
>
> Is that unfair?
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Sep 13 2003 - 18:09:52 BST