Hi Bo and All:
There is an interesting paper entitled "Meta-Paradigms in
Philosophical Thought" at
http://examinedlifejournal.com/archives/vol1ed4/metaparadigms.html.
The author identifies two broad but distinct modes of thought--the
rationalists/empiricists and the humanists/relativists.
Rationalists (scientific paradigm) are primarily concerned with the
question, "What is this?" They seek to discover the laws of nature,
human nature and society.
Humanists (postmodern paradigm) are primarily concerned with the
question, "How should we live?" For them, values are the central
problem and purpose of human existence.
Agreeing with Pirsig, the author points out that the scientific (SOM)
mode of thought is impersonal, value free, apolitical, causal and
empirical. By contrast (and not mentioned by Pirsig), humanistic
thought is described as personal, valuing, political, multi-causal and
imaginative.
The author further subdivides these two major thought paradigms.
Under the rationalists he subsets Plato (Rationalist-Idealist) and
Aristotle (Rationalist-Realist) while below the humanists he puts
Neitzche (Relativist-Realist) and Marx (Relativist-Idealist).
The humanist outlook is exemplified by postmodern intellectuals who
believe that things should be seen not from "outside" as in the
scientific paradigm (SOM) but from the "inside" of a cultural context.
They believe it serves mankind better to be "contextualizers," "story-
tellers," "faith-healers" and "conservationists."
In further defining the postmodern worldview, the author writes:
"In the 20th century, philosophy has, since the later Wittgenstein,
increasingly taken the "linguistic turn" in an anti-Cartesian fashion that
attempts to show as hopeless or irrelevant the separation of subject
and object, fact and value, is and ought. The postmodern thinker seeks
answers in conversation and discourse. Accordingly, truth and the
meaning of life is now better to be found in words and cultural
landscapes, not in a self-contained rational, thinking subject."
Now the reason I bring this up is twofold. First, I am and have always
been intrigued by Bo's view of Q-Intellect although I admit to having
less than a full grip on the concept. Obviously, the author of the paper
described above hasn't a clue about Q-Intellect. But he does have an
idea about meta-intellect, and I find it somewhat difficult to distinguish
between those two concepts. (Maybe "concept" is the wrong word to
use when referring to Q-Intellect since I suspect that its essence may
be, like mysticism, inexplicable.)
Second, Pirsig doesn't identify postmodernism as a separate thought
system on a par with SOM as does the author of the paper noted
above, making me wonder how he (Pirsig) would treat the
postmodernist emphasis on values and whether he would find
postmodernist thought morally bankrupt in spite of the lip service it
pays to qualities over quantification.
Personally I find postmodernism distasteful, primarily because of its
leftist, socialist, utopian agenda. And I find nothing in the MOQ too
support the postmodern paradigm. But I could be wrong.
Platt
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