Denis and Group
You said:
> My ongoing discussion with Bodvar has raised some doubt in my mind
> about whether or not Pirsig has really managed to rid himself of the
> S/O divide, after all.
Did I cause your doubts or.....?
> As everyone here remembers, Quality can be divided according to the
> MOQ into Dynamic Quality and Static Quality, the Unexpected and the
> Expected. SQ is further divided into the four levels of patterns of
> value, namely Inorganic, Biological, Social and Intellectual levels.
> Outside of this, nothing remains except Quality itself. I'll have to
> check, but strangely I believe that RMP says "Quality" and not
> "Dynamic Quality".
As said I "recant" about the QUALITY that can be divided into
DQ/SQ. I don't have LILA with me, right here, but this extra meta-
quality causes a whole can of worms to open and I doubt if Pirsig
says so at all ...or means it that way at least.
> Of course, Pirsig also points out before starting the MOQ that it's
> made of words about Quality and not of Quality itself, but decides to
> go on anyway. He also makes it clear that the MOQ is a map, one that
> describes the territory better than SOM will ever be able to, but
> still only a map.
This too. What is not words? Or in our minds? These somish
impossibilities are as a matter of fact THE STARTING POINT of the
MoQ. Now that we have Struan among us I should beware of
saying so, but P of ZAMM went the subjective path of the SOM all
the way and ended up in the solipsistic no-man's-land from where
he spotted the quality solution ....then to start anew about "all
words" or "all language" or "all in our minds" is to have missed the
MoQ idea completely. But as you say you are going to pursue the
objections to the bitter end so I take the following paragraph as the
devil pledging his case.
> I think most of us believe that the patterns, whatever levels they are
> from, are also intellectual patterns in the sense that our
> intelligence, since it has reached the Intellectual level, mainly
> deals with abstracts concepts deduced from experience. IOW, experience
> must be rationalized into words if we are to speak about it. And once
> you start speaking, everything is reduced to intellectual patterns. No
> dog comes out of the screen when you read the word "dog". Only the
> intellectual pattern remains, even if I am describing in *real* time a
> *real* dog. When he learned about the title of my upcoming post, Angus
> told me that it was language itself, by which I guess we could mean
> Q-Intellect, that most fundamentaly cuts us off into our own private
> worlds, and I tend to agree. Once the symbolic stage is reached,
> everything becomes a symbol.
> HOW FAR FROM SOM ?
> Therefore, my question is : how far is Pirsig from the Idealists point
> of view ?
I agree. If the above is taken as the MoQ, it's just another SOM
variant and not worth much, but - again - please s'il vous plait -
understand this P. figure sailing around the European waterways
like a Flying Dutchman hammering away at this book and thinking
about the new metaphysics. Would one single human being
understand the first thing of what he was saying? He simply dared
not present the "strong interpretation", but thought it best sounding
"academical" at first ....like you do below here.
> Is he not finally saying that there is nothing we can know
> about the "real" world (Quality is undefinable), and that every
> statement is relative to others statements and never to the "real"
> world? That it's all intellectual patterns anyway? In other words, is
> the trinity of Quality-DQ-SQ finally not reducible to a duality made
> of an unknowable (but *real* or rather, primary) "Quality/DQ" opposed
> to an *illusory* SQ that only exist as concepts, as intellectual
> patterns? How far is that from Subject/Object metaphysics?
> I mean, sure, we experience Quality, but since nothing but illusory
> patterns ever makes it to our brains... what good is it? Where is that
> bridge over the gap between mind and matter?
> I can hear your screams of anguish from here, Bodvar...
Good that you anticipated my reaction :-)
> THE CLEVER PLAN...
> OK, it's now time to admit that I presented this attack on the MOQ
> foundations only to squash it once and for all... :-)
> First of all, Quality is not "objective/primary", because it is also
> "subjective/conceptual". By this I mean that contrary to what
> Idealists used to think about the objective and subjective worlds,
> Quality ALSO englobes SQ. In the MOQ, the *real* world is as much
> about words and feeling as about electrons and DNA strands. Quality
> and Static Quality are not different "things". SQ is an *aspect* of
> Quality, but it is still Quality. To use an analogy, to say that
> Static Quality is irrevocably divorced from Quality is as absurd as to
> say that the color of my scarf is irrevocably divorced from my
> scarf... it just doesn't make sense.
Er...is this "MoQ for Dummies" ....or :-) ? The subjective side to the
SOM is NOT the DQ of MoQ! According to Pirsig the subject is
Social and Intellectual ....an interpretation that IMO is useful at
most instances, but meets with problems at other, so I have
proposed "Die Endlösung" with my SOLAQI.
> ALL-ENCOMPASSING QUALITY
> Quality is every atom and all the energy in the Universe, but also
> every words ever spoken, every book ever written, every dream that has
> ever moved the minds of humanity, every vision that has ever inspired
> an artist, every thought in the minds of philosophers the world over,
> every love ever felt, every hate and lust and hunger and pain...
> Quality is all that, and more.
This is OK. Static value is value too, but make no mistake of it:
The MoQ is also a duality and dynamism is diametrically opposite
to statics so it not that way that it reconciles the mind/matter
impossibility of SOM.
> Therefore, to say that words about Reality are not Reality is in fact
> imprecise, and one would have to add that they *are* a part of
> Reality, but not the whole stuff.
You seem hung up in the words/language notion. No sooner have
you and I reached some agreement before you are at it again.
> There I guess, people will come out screaming "So you see, our minds
> ARE separated !"
...as well as the "mind" notion. ) or is it rhetoric ...?
> Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but that is not SOM. Don't mix up the
> problems, will you ?
> WHAT IS SOM, THEN ?
> Lately, as the subject has drifted closer and closer to mystic states,
> many people seem to have attributed all kinds of meaning to SOM, ones
> that it didn't have when Pirsig first used it.
> SOM, as used by Pirsig, and as the name indicates, is the set of
> metaphysical presuppositions (and not an actual metaphysics, as Struan
> and others have said) that deals with the nature of the phenomenal
> world. Such presuppositions argue first and foremost (implicitely or
> explicitely) that Truth is the greatest good to which we should
> aspire, and that knowing truth would freed us from error, and usher us
> to something akin to godhood. It also states that there is such a
> thing as a *true* reality, and that the value of our judgments about
> it depends on their relation to it. To some, this relation exist in
> experience, to others, it exists as probability, or even as an
> impossibility, but the validity of such assumptions are NEVER
> questioned, in SOM (which would be more aptly named SOMs, since many
> metaphysical systems spawn from these assumptions). The "Truth
> Above/True World" assumptions are the highest value of SOM and, one
> could argue, their only moral claim.
Was there any SOM before the MoQ? Not in my opinion, judged
from myself it was the way reality was constructed from the outset,
and half my relief was that P (of ZAMM) had gone outside the SOM
mythos - which can be likened to Medieval man being brought out
in space to see the earth as a globe in a QUALITY cosmos.
What the SOM "says" we can now dissect, before it was the
FACT. The "fact" that its facts offered us nothing but frustration
was the bitter fact of reality. OK if "truth" was a meta-fact outside
this again can be discussed. Science did not care about such
metaphysical riddles.
> That, and nothing else (IMHO), is what Pirsig railed about. That
> all-prevailing absolute never-questioned blind faith in TRUTH (I
> *love* that capacity of English to add adjectives almost indefinitely
> ;). So ingrained by 2500 years of education that to question its value
> is tantamount to declaring yourself insane. Because whether or not
> people before or after Pirsig believe it can be reached or not, not
> ONE of them objects that they should strive for it. "...even when it
> isn't any good...", added Pirsig.
> It is this intellectual pyramid with Truth at the top, and nothing
> else, that is SOM. And that is utterly annihilated by the MOQ.
> HOW DOES THE MOQ DEFEATS SOM ?
> To be honest, it's not the MOQ but ZAMM that dispatches Truth to the
> limbo of dead "truths". But the MOQ, founded on the double insight of
> the fundamental monism of the Universe (as Quality), and of the
> falseness of Truth, puts the slab over the coffin, by providing an
> *alternative*.
I feel a certain uneasiness about jettisoning "truth" ...the many
truths greeting of Doug Renselle gave me the shivers. We can't
leave the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity (truth) and
this is were my SOLAQI saves the MoQ . This IS the Intellectual
level! At that level we may keep truth, mind, thinking ....etc ad
infinitum and their opposites.
> You see, in SOM(s), there is no way out. Forever and ever, you'll
> *know* that there is a *real* world and you'll know that everything
> would be all right if only you knew how to reach it. But if you
> philosophologise long enough, you'll also understand that it cannot be
> done. Truth is your goal, your God and your only Ideal, but to reach
> it is like trying to reach the horizon. But you're supposed to take it
> all with stoïcism and run anyway, blindlessly ahead until you drop,
> vanquished. That futile, sterile and miserable quest is then supposed
> to be the "highest calling" of our race, our pride and eternal burden.
RIGHT! Why didn't you start by this and save all the rest of your
great dialogue. A major work, I acknowledge the effort an assure
you that I have read it thoroughly, but I see no important points in
it. Particularly that about Wilber makes me doubt your
understanding ...regrettement.
Our difference - THE difference - is the QUALITY - Quality-DQ/SQ
question, but thanks for writing such a major work.
Bo
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