Lawry, Angus and All
As we have entered the 5th level path again I take the liberty to
open a new thread.
Lawry:
> For a report on chimp ability to 'think' by connecting signs and
> creating new realities, see Fouts, NEXT OF KIN. A fascinating read.
I too find such reports fascinating. How to find it, is it a book or...?
> Bo:
> > you will see from the above that I regard the Quality idea as an
> > intellectual pattern that has started searching for foothold beyond
> > the Intellect, hardly any established 5th level exactly yet ....
> > There has been many fancy suggestions, super-computation, world-wide
> > web ...and so on, but my suggestion is as simple as sketched here.
> Yes, it seems to me that to be interesting we must posit this fifth
> level. If Quality were to be its marker, how do you think this would
> appear? With intellect we have argumentation, models, logic, data
> research and analysis, and so forth. What do you think we
> have/hear/see/do at the 5th Quality-based level?
OK Lawry, this prospect is what gives the MoQ its enormous
attraction/fascination ..for me at least. I know that Pirsig doesn't
speak about any such development, but we must be allowed to
explore the Q "waters" to see where it may lead. I may have irred
into some tributary dead end, but till now it looks like the "source
of the Nile".
It springs from my so-called SOLAQI idea (subject/object logic as
quality's intellect). With the condition that SOM is Intellect added
to Pirsig's thesis that the MoQ is to replace SOM ...the Quality
idea is an intellectual pattern that can't "stand living at home" any
longer.
Above I say the "Q-idea", but it really is the MoQ, so one gets the
logic loop that MoQ is the top level of itself. The alternative is
Denis' (and -I admit - Pirsig's) position that both the MoQ and the
SOM are "ordinary" intellectual patterns, which makes the MoQ a
pattern of a level of itself ...a difficulty that Denis avoids by evoking
a QUALITY outside the DQ.
Pirsig's original theory how the MoQ "contains" the SOM is that
objects=inorganic/organic, while subjects=social/intellect, and he
has said (in a letter to McWatt) that he draws a parallel between Q-
Intellect and "mind", but can anything transcend this mind-intellect,
and can we look upon the social level as mindless? It's these
quandaries that I find the S/O-intellect solves. The intellectual level
isn't mind, rather the mind/matter DIVIDE.
This is the bones of contention.
.........................................................................................
Angus wrote:
> Bo, first. Bo, I think you give more credence to MOQ
> than what Pirsig intended. And you are unfair to John
> in his understanding of MOQ. John, I think you have to
> be more clear in your presentation of Wilber. As
> Russell said, "In the end it all tastes like chicken."
> You should be more clear, as equating Quality with
> Consciousness was a little lazy and a lot explosive.
> MOQ is Q-intellect, and Pirsig claims it is a better
> metaphysics than SOM. End of story. I think you - BO
> -understand this. It is NOT another "level", the 5th
> level. Now, YOU may think it is a 5th level and if YOU
> think that you should make it clear and don't tell
> John he is wrong for not understanding Bo's MOQ.
> Please use something like BMOQ instead so as not to
> confuse Pirsig's MOQ. Pirsig's MOQ has 4 levels. (A
> BMOQ 5th level would be Wilber's autonomous
> individual, or the Aquarian transpersonal individual,
> IMHO).
I accept this criticism, but have repeatedly said that I don't have
Pirsig's backing, but it's not THAT which is our difference, but
rather Wilber's non-existent initial metaphysical inversion - the
examples of which Pirsig labours so much on. This tells that it
must be of enormous importance for the MoQ. Admittedly I only
know Wilber's "Up from Eden" so if he says anything similar in
another work I am willing to reconsider.
If I am right one can't very well call him exploring Quality - he is
exploring Wilber's SOM-based system. I regard this "Quality is
Reality" axiom as the most important move and can't really see
that I have invented any BoMoQ!. That the 5th level should be
similar to any Wilberian "Aquarian transspersonal individual" level
is foreign to me.
> >So, your style and abilities don't lack, but in spite
> >of that you never got the gist the MoQ.....in my
> >opinion. The Bard talks about a different ways to
> >Quality, but if this doesn't include the MoQ it
> >raises serious problems.
> That's wrong. Pirsig invented the MOQ BECAUSE he
> wanted to show how Americans are both European and
> Indian, or respectively orderly and free spirited.
Is it wrong to say that a SOM-based system don't include the MoQ
kind of Quality? You are right about the initial Indian idea, Pirsig
started an anthropological book project called "Them Pesky
Indians".
> That was the reason for inventing it, but it took on a
> whole other life of it's own: a moral system role. You
> can throw away MOQ at anytime REALLY if you receive
> the purpose of the MOQ: get you to see the conflicting
> natures in your soul : orderliness and freedom. That's
> the whole point of MOQ and it is NOT essential to
> Quality. Now BMOQ may be different...
I have problems with this anthro-centric view, after all the MoQ
postulates that DQ first spawned the material universe and "our
soul" wasn't much at that time. Well, a "Metaphysics of Soul"
(MoS) is possible but if so one would have to start by postulating -
and proving - that Reality is Soul..etc. Throwing away the MoQ and
keeping "orderliness and freedom"? Please explain where that
leaves us.
> >until one starts examining things (from a SOM pov
> >that is) closely and find that reality is a CONSTRUCT
> >OF OUR MIND, the very insight of P. of ZAMM that lead
> >to the Quality insight.
> That insight is Descartes actually, at least in the
> Western tradition. ZAMM's goal was to reconcile the
> classical and romantic notions of the self into one
> system: Quality. He says that explicitly in LILA. He
> says he is a son of American philosophy.
Descartes' insight? Not in my philosophy book. That came by
Berkeley a hundred years later. Descartes made the mind/matter
split principal ....after him the problem of how these two realms
interact became a major philosophical issue, Berkeley postulated
that matter was a mind construct which alarmed Kant to criticize
this pure speculation ("Reinen Vernunft") and said that there was
an objective reality out there (Ding an Sich), but that mind provided
time, space and causality before it became a subjective experience
("Ding für Uns"). And at that position philosophy hibernated until
Pirsig's.
Pirsig says that the Romantic/Classic opening was a false one.
> Now Bo may
> have understood this by reading Pirsig, but then again
> that is Bo's history. Pirsig is NOT original here.
It seems important to make Pirsig ordinary, another footnote to
Kant, but his claim is genuine, new and enormous...in the Western
tradition at least.
> >The MoQ says that DQ is indefinable, but about the
> >static layers much can be said.
> Wrong again. Quality is indefinable. DQ is, to an
> extent because DQ is part of MOQ. DQ can't be made
> into a "law" which would be static, but it can be
> defined as it is part of MOQ.
OK, this is the heart of the matter. A QUALITY beyond the
Dynamic Quality of the MoQ?! As said I backed down on this in
my discussion with Denis P. but see that it leads into difficulties.
The MD has been on to this before. Are there anyone who
remember what has been agreed on!
John B:
> > But I go beyond you when I assert that language is
> > not mired in
> > objectivity, but is actually able to transcend it,
> >provided there is
> > shared experience between those using the language.
> John, I would say your
> description is in line with Late Wittgenstein.
> Language has an objectifying nature and a
> non-objectifying nature.
(Me)
> >>Right, this is the first part of the Q insight:
> >>Language is not mired in objectivity
> Bo, you lose me here.
Well, I refer to Phaedrus' insight (ZAMM) when he says that we
build up language from analogies not from any objective reality (p
243 Corgi Paperback). But the thing is that "language" in the usual
SOM context is alternatively everything or nothing ...exactly as
"mind". In fact it is usually defined as mind! "We are suspended in
language" according to Niels Bohr. Denis once reminded me that
after all we speak about these things, but then speaking about
speaking is also speaking so this argument turns on itself.
In the MoQ language is not this mystic realm which must be even
outside the QUALITY which - supposedly - is outside the DQ.
Another metaphysical candidate - a MOL!
> MOQ is a better metaphysics, at least that is what
> Pirsig claims. Bo's MOQ (BMOQ) is another story.
> So define your terms gentlemen. Let the fight begin
> again.
Phew, I haven't done anything else than defining termes since
Goodness knows when.
Thanks for a clarifying post Angus.
Bo
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