Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 27 May 1998 02:54:24 +0100
On Fri, 22 May 1998 23:22:17 +0200
Hugo Fjelsted Alroe wrote:
> > (perhaps SAIOM should be renamed SOTAQI?
> >(S-O thinking as Q-intellect)).
> This change would sure make your idea dramatically more agreeable to
> me, Bo! And it would make it more or less the same, I think, as
> saying that the intellectual level is the level of
> self-consciousness or self-awareness, in the sense that I advocated
> a while ago.
Hugo and Squad!
Sorry for the delay, but this post was so important that I simply
had to think for a while to see if I had stumbled into a trap set up
by myself. But no, I think we have reached consensus and I can only
blame myself for not having been more clear on the S-O conscious/S-O
Metaphysics distinction. My only defence is that there really exist
no explicit subject-object theory distinct from subject-object
"intuition" (as Hugo so often has pointed to).
> The intellectual level is established by the ability to not only
> think about the world, but also think about one self as an object in
> the world; - 'our selves as objects' is what we call 'subjects'.
> This self-reflective ability to 'think about one self' is, I
> believe, what we call self-consciousness. This we may call
> subject-object thinking.
The dawning of S-O consciousness (which is now the dawning of
Q-Intellect) I have tried to formulate as "...value of self as
different from other (or...higher than society)", to avoid the
term "consciousness" which brings back SOM's conscious vs
unconscious, sentient/insentient etc. The need for this distinction is
obvious. See Theo on Jonathan and Fintan.
> And the next step (I believe this may be what Bo has referred to as
> the fifth level - the metaphysics of quality level, but I am not
> sure it is more than an evolution of/on the intellectual level) is
> the further reflection upon subject-object thinking. This reflection
> upon subject-object thinking is what Pirsig, and some other
> philosophers in the last couple of centuries, has been doing. Pirsig
> called his own second order (to use a buzz-word) thinking
> 'metaphysics of quality', and he called all philosophical thinking,
> that was not second order, but only first order subject-object
> thinking, for 'subject-object metaphysics'.
The idea of MOQ as a new level was really Platt Holden's
contribution, but it released a small epiphany with me. However, I
also accept Hugo's limitation that the next Q-level is still a
mere evolution of the Intellectual level - struggling hard to become
noticed even at that!
> Hence my insistence on subject-object metaphysics being the
> *unquestioned* subject-object thinking, - the moment you start
> reflecting upon this subject-object thinking, you are in effect
> doing second order thinking, moving towards the next step, the step
> where we find metaphysics of quality.
> My reason for not considering this yet another level, but only a
> step or an evolution on the intellectual level, is that the
> self-reflective ability which gave rise to the intellectual level in
> the first place, self-consciousness, is the same ability that
> provides for the second step, given a few milleniums of serious
> thought.
> To me this seems to fall into place, Bo, - do you agree or have I
> misread your posting?
No misreading, this was one great event Hugo. Thank you.
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