Andreas,
> You wrote:
(quoting Bo)
The first postulates - axioms - of any all-encompassing systems
(from geometry to metaphysics) are supposed to be self-evident:
not proven. It is the ability of the system to resolve the paradoxes
of the former which is its proof and the MOQ has done so
excessively regarding the SOM.
> I support this and I do not understand Ricks critique though I can not go
> further into that.
RICK:
When I responded to Bo's comment it was very late at night and I was quite a
rush. In retrospect, I suppose I missed some broad strokes in explaining
what I meant. I'll give it a quick shot:
"And as for the MoQ "excessively" resolving the paradoxes of SOM... I think
this is a bit of a dodge, after all, the SOM is a "catch all" system
designed by PIRSIG for the purpose of correcting with the MoQ....
Whether the MoQ has actually resolved any real philosophical problems has
yet to be seen.... the jury is still out on this one."
What I meant here is to refer to the most common criticism of MoQ from
professionals, everyone from oxford metaphysician Galen Strawson to "our
own" Struan Hellier have pointed out that there is no position called
"subject/object metaphysics" acknowledged by virtually anyone but Robert
Pirsig and his followers. Go dig through you local library's philosophy
section and you'll find all sorts of philosophical dichotomies that will
remind you of what Pirsig calls the SOM (Plato's ideas/forms - Decartes's
mind/matter - Kant's Nouminal/phenouminal, etc...) but Pirsig's SOM is none
of these. Rather, it is a "catch all" that refers to all of these others at
times, a simplification for the reader. The problem being (as many have
pointed out) is that the simplification is a position held and defended by
no one. If Bo is right, and the only proof of the validity of the MoQ's
first postulates is that it "excessively" dissolves the paradoxes of the
SOM--- then I think we're all chasing our tails here. Edgar Allan Poe,
creator of the "detective" story, wrote that he wondered what was so amazing
about spinning a web just so you can let others watch you unravel it (a
paraphrase). Pirsig has used this very device in both his books --- he
spins the web of the SOM and describes its problems and then unravels it
with Quality and the MoQ as we sit amazed. (Don't worry - I know most
people in the forum will disagree with this no matter how clearly I explain
it - I can live with that).
I also wrote....
"[Pirsig] wrote a wrote a novel where the hero was a metaphysics (the MoQ),
and like all
good novels, he needed a bad guy for his hero to face off against, in this
case a "bad guy" metaphysics (the SOM)."
The point of this was just to tell you that I don't "blame" Pirsig for the
whole "SOM" thing like some others do. I believe that first and foremost
Pirsig is a novelist, not a philosopher. He's writing Good books...
philosophical detective stories where Detective Phaedrus unravels the
mysterys of universe using the MoQ, defeating the immoral and creativity
choking SOM at every turn.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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