Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Mon, 25 May 1998 08:58:08 +0100
Fri, 22 May 1998 09:27:23 +0000
Donald T Palmgren wrote:
snip........
> I don't think you need to re-think your understanding of the
> MoQ, Bo, but maybe you could re-examine your understanding of
> "Idealism."
Donny!
Don't you see that idalism or materialism are the legitimate
childs of SOM? No matter how frenetically they struggle to free
themselves of the family bonds they fall back and have to admit the
other sibling's rights.
> I went looking for a definition of the term and I found
> this passage in an ubpubilshed commontary by Dwight Van de Vate:
>"Now self-consciousness must not mearly relinquish itself,
> alianate itself [into S and O], and then merge w/ the substance of the
> world, for this would be merely a one-sided movement of the imagination.
> (Perhaps we might say: an "idealism," in the sense normaly given the
> term by Anglo-Amarican philosophers.) Not only must the subject know
> itself as an object, but the object in itself, the ethical substance,
> must come to the knowledge of itself as a knowing subject."
> Now, if there's something in there that you dissagree w/ please let me
> know.
I would not disagree if I still were a SOMist, but from a MOQ
position it's superflous or simply nonsense. The term "subject"
invokes the MIND (of SOM) which looks OBJECTIVELY upon its body and
environment - yes, even looks upon itself as an object which in turn
"......must come to the knowledge of itself as a knowing subject"!.
Does not all this get dizzy; like looking into two mirrors? It is
this complicatedness that Pirsig eradicated with one stroke of
genius dropping the S-O distinction - AS A METAPHYSICS?
> It's like you agree that SOM is built around the false belief in
> the duality of S and O, but you don't want to agree that S and O are
> really the same thing, which is the position defined as Idealism, just
> so you can set MoQ in opposition to any form of Idealism. As I see it,
> the MoQ is an Idealism, a lot like Zen or Taoism. What part of the
> general definition of idealism given above does not fit your
> understanding of the MoQ?
As said above this becomes an artificial way of posing the problem.
If you want to call the MOQ idealism, fine, but the idealists
maintain that everything is mind and that matter is really mind too,
but what good does that do? It is MOQ's assertion that everything is
value and that there are a rising order of static value levels which
is the BIG difference. (One can easily replace 'value' with 'mind',
but Pirsig says he stuck to the term because of it's ambigous
character: it's neither mind nor matter within our thinking).
However, the ability to see oneself as a separate "entity"
from other (what you possibly calls S-O consciousness. I
called it S-O thinking (or intuition)) I recognize fully. Hugo
recognised my SOTAQI idea after this clarification. Hopefully you
will have a small epiphany soon. :-)
Bo
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