Hullo Bo,
Thanks for your rather back-handed compliment re my essay. I must say I
write essays to clarify my own thinking, hence initially for myself. It is a
bonus if someone else finds something of value there. However, from your
comments I take it that you take great exception to my point of view.
Unfortunately, I am not sure just where the problem is for you. You seem to
be suggesting that I am stuck in an idealist position, where I take
intellect or words or thinking to be everything. This is so far from my
position as to be laughable - I constantly ask that people not get stuck on
the words, (which are, nonetheless, all we have to communicate with,) but
see them as fingers pointing to the moon of experience.
Your question, so far as I can make it out, is "What is outside the realm
where theorizing takes place?" You then say "My opinion is that nothing
whatsoever is." Is this your real opinion or a rhetorical flourish? You go
on to challenge the "thinking vs reality premise", which I presume you mean
to apply to me. You then insist upon "a metaphysics as a world unto itself".
Finally you recapitulate:
"Metaphysics are worlds unto themselves. MoQ's intellectual level is not
SOM's "intellect" where thinking takes place, not "conscisousness" where
everything takes place, not "awareness" where humans solely reigns, not even
"words" where everything is confined ...etc etc. MoQ is the top level of
itself and its intellectual level is the SOM - not just its "S" but the very
S/O aggeregate."
So may I start by looking at metaphysics. Like Wilber, my concern is that
metaphysics can be thought without evidence. There can be a power in a well
presented world view that is remarkable. Virtually any branch of human
knowledge suffers from fashionable metaphysical diseases (even if not
acknowledged as such). So we have had Cartesian dualism, which particularly
upsets Pirsig, and various forms of postmodernism, of which the
deconstructionist critique particularly annoys me, and behaviourism in
psychology, and so on and on. They come and go, but while present they exert
enormous power over their devotees. It is as if their way of looking at the
world takes over, in much the way some authors see memes operating within
human societies. The strongest meme, they suggest, pushes out the weaker,
and survives to propogate.
But a metaphysics is just a well thought out conceptual system. Pirsig
acknowledges there is no such thing as a perfect metaphysics. In fact, he is
quite clear that writing metaphysics is in itself a degenerate activity, a
sort of unhealthy addiction. In some ways he is right. But a metaphysics can
also be taken more lightly, as a sort of game, in which there is skill and
subtlety, without getting too carried away with the outcome. Otherwise we
can find ourselves caught up in "the tendency to do what is 'reasonable'
even when it isn't any good". In my opinion, a metaphysics is 'good' when it
assists me to work on myself.
I suspect that you have confused quality with the metaphysics of quality. If
so, this is a grievous fault. It is like those Christians who take the Bible
to be the unchangeable word of God, and in so doing deny the Holy Spirit,
which is God in action.
When you say the MoQ is "the top level of itself", you totally lose me. I
see some truth in your assertion that the intellectual level operates in
terms of subject/object categories, given that is how language is
structured, and given that intellect must communicate through language. I
have never been able to comprehend your SOLAQI idea, except as I have just
stated it. It always seems to me that it has a more profound significance to
you that I never grasp.
To return to your question. "What is outside the realm where theorizing
takes place?" My answer is, everything except ideas. Are ideas dynamic or
static? Both. But surely if the dynamic/static divide is basic, ideas must
be one or the other. [And here we come to the absolutely crucial point.] I
experience dynamic quality in some ideas, static quality in others. The
metaphysics is wrong. My experience of quality is the fundamental against
which all else is measured, and if the metaphysics of quality does not mesh
with my experience, then the MoQ is at least flawed.
I used the example of the tune on the radio to make a similar point in one
of my essays, I think. The tune is not simply dynamic or simply static. In
my experience, most music grows in dynamic quality for a number of hearings,
then gradually fades towards static quality. The dynamic/static division,
the most basic structure in the MoQ, fails in the real world of experience.
And this is my fundamental point, and here I agree with Pirsig. Quality is
experienced. It just is. Any metaphysics is just a static latch. It helps to
talk about quality. But as Billy Dean said in a recent post "In my opinion,
however, words tend to satisfy the intellect too quickly, making us only
"think" we understand. I have always felt that real learning takes place in
my body, not in my head." I tend to agree. First we experience quality, then
we think and talk about it, making sense of it to ourselves. Finally we
write a metaphysics to put it all together in a structure that appeals to
intellectuals and other inhabitants of the Church of Reason. But, sooner or
later, a new experience of quality comes along that doesn't fit in the
metaphysics. It always happens. That is why Pirsig acknowledges there can
never be a perfect or complete metaphysics.
So Bo, I experience thinking as part of my reality, not an alternative to
reality. It has its uses and its limitations. As does a metaphysics, which
is just a more structured and integrated system of thought. When you react
to my questioning of the MoQ with words like "seduced" and "smoke-screen"
then I get the impression that you have reified the MoQ. You have confused a
metaphysics with quality itself, and there I cannot follow you.
John B
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