Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Sat, 5 Sep 1998 03:58:40 +0100
Donny.
If philosophizing isn't supposed to lead somewhere I don't follow,
you and I don't think you follow yourself. You have arrived
at many a good point in our discussion. This last about the fall myth
for instance and how the fall might be made good again.
But I must say this again: there are times when I wonder about your
grasp of the Quality idea. You wrote:
> The idea, Bo, is simpler, I think, than you're making it out to
> be. If a group of people are talking about the law of gravity, then this
> law is an object they know -- knowing subject/known object. If you ask
> "How does this object exist?" then the answer is: "It exists as a token
> being passed along (via moral guidlines) in our conversation." That's how
> this rock exists. That's how Santa Clause exists, how these so-called
> "InOrgPoVs" exist. Where were the InOrgpoVs before Pirsig came up w/ 'em.
> Up in the Platonic Heavens w/ Newton's laws?
> W/o humanity there is no law of gravity, there arn't any rocks,
> birds, suns, or time, or whatever. There's only sand. That's it. Just
> sand. (See my soon to come response to Magnus for clairification.)
If you think this ....where were things before anyone thought about
them... is self-evident you are dead right in a S-O METAPHYSICS
context, but this is what the MOQ is a relief from!!!!! I have always
warned against using ZMM in the MOQ debate. Young Phaedrus was a
child of SOM and his thinking were from its point of view; which was
what drove him mad.
OK. Pirsig wrote this book in the seventies after he had had the
Q-revelation and recovered, but his new metaphysics was NOT fully
developed then. He says explicitly in LILA that he spent an enormous
amount on time on lousy openings. The Classic-Romantic one of ZMM was
one, so please don't use ZMM to argue about the MOQ. It is a
marvelous book, but it is not MOQ-clean!
Back to your.....
> W/o humanity there is no law of gravity, there arn't any rocks,
> birds, suns, or time, or whatever. There's only sand. That's it. Just
> sand. (See my soon to come response to Magnus for clairification.)
This is the essence of S-O Metaphysics: there is matter and there is
mind; mankind's matter body has a mind and this contains it
all....every last bit of it. Remove mankind and there's nothing left.
But enter LILA and the fullfledged Metaphysics of Quality which says
that the S-O METAPHYSICAL division is wrong; the chasm is NOT
between subjective mind and objective body but between Dynamic and
Static Quality (he could have called it anything but value is the
weak spot of SOM).
If, after this metaphysical revolution there comes one Donald
Palmgren and just repeats that everything is in the mind, then DP
has obviously not understood the first thing of the MOQ. It's just
exasperating: you have agreed that Q-Intellect isn't SOM's mind,
but merely a static latch and if it slips it's not disapperance of
everything, but a drop down to the next static and more solid
latch: Society, and yet the next moment you are at it again oblivious
of the MOQ's basics.
It is perfectly OK if you would criticize this first metaphysical
twist and say that it is wrong, impossible or even crazy ..whatever,
but to make a show of understanding Pirsig and perfunctory refer to
his writings.....and THEN crank up the SOM logic about
everything-in-the-mind and subjective-projecting-of-objects ....it's
plainly disappointing. Give me Struan Helliger's straightforward
rejection of Pirsig's ideas any time compared to this..
You are possibly the sort of guy who won't be told anything at all
and that is also respectable, but why make a show of carrying on a
logical argument if you from the start has decided that there is no
goal and repeatedly start from point zero just to keep your
word-dispenser going?
Bodvar
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