Doug Renselle (renselle@on-net.net)
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 15:49:02 +0100
Peter,
You have several good points in response to Magnus' email to Donny.
Your comprehension of the purpose of the static levels and the morality
of support via stasis from below versus control via dynamis (innovation)
from above, is superb. See the MoQ table (It has major bugs, but it
shows this aspect of the levels well.).
However, I think Magnus is perceiving Donny well. Donny appears as a
SOMite attempting to view MoQ from a purely (bundled) SOM perspective.
I detect some of this in you too.
We are all SOMites (assuming we share western culture), but many of us
on TLS have spent years trying to intuit MoQ. We are all on that
journey, but each with different degrees of attainment.
When I read your and Donny's words I hear a much stronger SOM influence
than when I read Platt's, Magnus', Bo's, etc. Their progress along the
pathway to MoQ is greater than yours and Donny's, IMO.
BTW, this is GOOD! You are here, with us, giving us the opportunity to
move with you toward better intuition of MoQ -- if you want to do that.
If you don't want to do that, we already have enough opposition, and we
don't need an overabundance of anti-MoQ rhetoric here. (In August of
1997, Bodvar wanted to boot me off the site for similar reasons. :-) If
you have not, you should read the correspondence twixt Pirsig and me on
this subject. See: 'Does the MoQ value its own extension?' at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670/extension.html )
After you make the good point about the levels, your prose below
degenerates, IMO, into a SOM-slanted analysis of MoQ. Much of what you
say simply is NOT in Lila. Much of what you say does NOT reflect what
Pirsig teaches us.
Without considering each paragraph in detail it becomes very clear that
when one uses the word 'objective' in the MoQ one reverts to SOM (unless
you are in MoQ context and explicitly state you are describing aspects
of SOM in SOM jargon). When one says 'subject(ive)' or 'object(ive)' as
a student of MoQ, one belies one's true metaphysics. MoQ demands a new
jargon to break from the legacy SOM.
Magnus' onus on us, however subtle, to re-read ZMM and Lila are pure
Quality.
Being not as bright as most of you, I am on a fifth iteration through
Lila. I finished a fourth pass on ZMM in January...yet still learning
new stuff. MoQ is unshallow!
Pay attention to Magnus' advice (unless you enjoy the SOM sustenance).
Mtty,
Doug Renselle.
--- peter@pzw1.resnet.cornell.edu wrote: > > Hey guys and gals... > > On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Magnus Berg wrote: > > > The day my interest in philosophy is dependent on budget, I hope I > have > > the sense to quit. Another thing, budget is social SPoV. Science, > > including philosophy, is intellectual SPoV. So, according to MoQ, it > > is immoral for budget to inhibit science. Of course I realize that > much > > of science today is dependent on budget, it is nevertheless immoral. > > this is actually something i've been wondering about: is it really > always > immoral for a pattern of value on the lower order/level to inhibit the > behaviors of a pattern of value on a higher level? isn't the whole > proposal-budget way of doing science merely a social static-latch that > keeps scientists from going haywire Dynamically and losing > pre-established > Static Quality? > > > Philosophers don't dare to get emotionally involved because then, > > their so called "objectiveness" gets polluted by their personal > > likes and dislikes, what we call value. And value is something > > that is totally forbidden in all "objective" science. > > actually, Value is all that ever matters in science. the problem is > that > if you are trying to study inorganic patterns of Value, and you have > all > this interference from social and intellectual patterns of value, it's > hard to isolate the inorganic pattern. (of course this begs the > question, > "just why do why think we can isolate anything at all?" but that is > another whole can of beans altogether.) > > you can also look at it this way: what is "objectivity"? when a > physicist > is objective, he/she looks at the inorganic, and only the inorganic, > and > tries to find a description of its behavior independent of the > cultural/social and intellectual (and biological) patterns of value. > when > a social scientist is being "objective", he/she looks at social > patterns > of value and keeps in mind the influences from biological and > inorganic > patterns (e.g. considerations of birth rates (biological) and > local geography/environment (inorganic) when investigating the tribal > rituals of a small primitive culture). > > but what about people studying the intellectual level? psychiatrists > know > they must take into account a person's social patterns (family, > childhood, > etc.) and biological patterns (chemical inbalances) in order to > understand > or experiment on intellectual patterns. why are psychologists so > eager to > get a good cross-section of all sorts of people to do their little > tests? > because they want to find data and effects that are independent of > social > and biological factors, and are purely intellectual patterns. > > so in a sense, "objectivity" is not an evil Subject-Object Metaphysics > construct at all, but can be understood - and used - in the MoQ. in > fact, > it MUST be used in the MoQ, if we are to really understand anything. > the > Subject-Object Metaphysics has, in a sense, perverted the word to mean > ONLY the minimization of social (and, to a degree, intellectual) > patterns > of value in "science", which is ostensibly a study of the inorganic > and > biological. the problem arises when people like philosophers and > psychologists and anthropologists try to filter out the wrong patterns > of > value in order to "objectify" their data. > > i guess a suitable analogy would be with circuits. if you want to > investigate behavior at lower frequencies, then it makes sense to > filter > out high frequency "noise". but if you want to study high frequency > responses of the circuit, well, it makes no sense to put in a high > frequency noise filter. so the "evil" lies not with the act of > filtering > noise, just with using the wrong kind of noise filter. > > however, lots of philosophers probably are trapped in the church of > reason > and try to be objective in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons. i'm > just > defending the virtue of the meta-philosophical ideal of "objectivity". > > > No pun intended, but sometimes I'm beginning to doubt if you > > really read ZMM and Lila. All I said above is there, but much > > clearer than my ramblings. But if you're also trapped in the > > church of reason, I can understand your reasoning. There's no > > way to fit the MoQ within the church of reason. > > actually i have very little doubt that donny has read ZMM and Lila. > he has perhaps read it with greater skepticism, which should be > applauded > by all of us as more a virtue than a sin. :) > > > > But "objective" means "brute fact." Objective-subjective > are types > > > of truth not types of things. So, I don't say Pirsig wants to > make > > > Quality a (known)object or a Body. I'm saying he wants to give it > the > > > truth status of a brute fact. He himself says that this is how it > all got > > > started -- How do you assign grades in a rhetoric class? Is it > > > subjective? Dosn't he clearly react against that? Dosn't he > out-right say > > > he wants Quality to be absolute? > > > > No again, he said that it was neither subjective nor objective. He > avoided > > both horns of his faculty's dilemma by saying that subjective and > objective > > are both derived from Quality, *NOT* that Quality was objective! > > The church of reason says that if a truth is not objective, it is > subjective. > > That's what SOM is all about. All philosophies in the SOM bag > defines one > > and only one truth based on a certain mix of objectivity and > subjectivity. > > hmm... to perhaps more clearly define the issue here: > > Donny said: "But 'objective' means 'brute fact.' Objective-subjective > are > types of truth not types of things. So, I don't say Pirsig wants to > make > Quality a (known)object or a Body. I'm saying he wants to give it the > truth status of a brute fact. " > > Magnus said: "He avoided both horns of his faculty's dilemma by saying > that subjective and objective are both derived from Quality, *NOT* > that > Quality was objective!" > > i think the issue here is that donny is saying pirsig wants to make > Quality have the "truth status" that "brute fact" has in the > Subject-Object metaphysics, and magnus is turned off by the idea > because > "brute fact" is synonymous with "objectivity" in the Subject-Object > Metaphysics. no one is saying that pirsig asserted Quality is > objective, > just that he thinks - as, presumably, do we all - that Quality is as > real > and as "true" as any "objective" thing in the Subject-Object > Metaphysics. > > > And about the "brute fact" part. History, relativity and most of > all, > > quantum mechanics should be enough to show that there's no such > truth > > as a "brute fact" truth. Pirsig snapped *out* of that hypnosis, not > into > > another. > > hmm... "there's no such truth as a 'brute fact' truth"? what does > that > mean? i can somewhat understand the history part, but i'm not so sure > i > know what you mean about Relativity and Quantum Mechanics... > > Peter > > -- > post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com > unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com > homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670 > >-- "Now, we daily see what science is doing for us. This could not be unless it taught us something about reality; the aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relations between things; outside those relations there is no reality knowable."By Henri Poincaré, in 'Science and Hypothesis,' p. xxiv, translated from French in 1905 by J. Larmor, published 1952 by Dover Publications.
-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
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