DENIS, PLATT and ALL.
Denis, I invest so much in talking to you because you (almost)
understand, and I now zoom in on this part of your last message
because it's the language issue which is the key. You are naturally
exasperated over me continuing "talking" not seeing the obvious
fact that everything is just ....language.
> Saying that everything is Language (which I hope is now clear is NOT
> my stance) has its own problems,
No cheekiness but its not clear at all, to the contrary it's only too
clear that once you enter the language "black hole" nothing can be
kept outside of it. You say it has problems. Ha! It's the
understatement of the year. Look, language is another facet of the
MIND spectre and - IN A SOM CONTEXT - it is easy to prove that
everything is mind ...or language, I don't start on the proof because
you know philosophy's history (the Empiricists: Berkeley and
Hobbes ....and Kant who believed he had saved something from the
whirlpool)
> the worst of which being that since
> in Language everything is context-bound to the nth level (words only
> mean something in the context of other words, ad infinitum), we have
> entered a world of total subjectivity and meaninglessness. It is
> madness incarnate, IMHO.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's the very point. This was what drove P. of ZAMM nuts (who at
that time was a somist, what else could he be?). As you so aptly
say: "...a world of total subjectivity and meaninglessness", but this
is the inevitable conclusion if an analytical mind goes the SOM
path all the way, and P. was a fanatical such, he didn't have the
good sense to back off. OTOH, only by going it all the way could
he obtain the QUALITY view. It cost him a lot. I know because I
was on the same path once, but turned and ran and remained in
limbo for more than ten years when I didn't dare think along those
lines for fear of the "vastation". Encountering Pirsig's ZAMM and
finding another person who had had the same experience ....and
hinted at a solution was salvation for me.
> It is also, if Ken Wilber is to be believed,
> the pathological side of vision-logic, where the self-reflexive nature
> of language brings aperspectival madness and the notion that
> everything is meaningless.
Maybe Wilber also has had this vision, but like me he must have
turned back too early and thereby created a half-way "spiritual"
perverted MoQ.
> SOM brought about the notion of a meaning no longer defined by
> society, but it still was meaningful (if objectively true). With
> "vision-logic" comes a meaning no longer defined by society, and no
> longer restricted by the belief in an absolute truth (there is no
> "true" meaning). Unfortunately, this is often translated into "there's
> no meaning". At all.
Correct, but this is seen from the MoQ. Before Pirsig there was no
SOM - it was REALITY itself. Only now are we able to see it the
way you describe it, but Denis mon ami, don't you see that you
have reached exactly the same approach as myself: "....SOM
brought about the notion of a meaning no longer defined by
society". If SOM is what superseded Q-society it HAS TO BE Q-
intellect. Voila! You are a solaqist too.
OK, "Vision-logic" may be Pirsig's fourth moral code, my 5th level,
or Platt's "Aesthetic level", but "mind's eye" introduces the
mind/matter (S/O) spectre again.
> And this is the dead end of a SOM world where Truth, having been
> exposed as a sham, leaves everyone in the Void. In fact there is a
> parallel between the "death of God" and the modern lack of morals and
> the "death of Truth" and the modern lack of meaning. Both stem from a
> valueless world, where nothing is better than anything else and where,
> as a result, nothing can be said which has any meaning. It is the
> intellect catching itself in its reflexion
Hmmm. I'm not sure if we agree or not. Is it by subject-object logic
(SOL) that "truth has been exposed as a sham"? IMO it UPHOLDS
the value of objetivity (truth) different from falseness (subjectivity),
yet a fanatical analythic dissection (like that of P of ZAMM) shows
that it is without a foundation. Seen in the SOL+AQI light it's all
explained: Each Q-level supersedes the former, but the former is
not left useless, so if Intellect is the value of truth (objectivity)
versus falseness(subjectivity) it means that the truth/falseness
divide will continue to be of great value. Would you accept this
>, and instead of seeing
> itself as the Eye of Reality, sees itself as the Eye looking at the
> Eye looking at the Eye... unto infinity.
All right I buy this too, even this Wilberian stuff - if associated with
the MoQ - makes it easy prey for ....you know who. I would of
course have liked to elaborate on the shift to the Dynamic/Static
divide instead of the subject/object (or the language/reality one that
you have chosen), but my word-avalanches only obscure the view.
**************************
Platt said:
> I don't mean to butt in here but I can't help but get out the ax I've
> been grinding since the beginning that a fifth level, if there is one,
> has got to have something to do with esthetics. The following from
> Denis where he makes a judgment about an intellectual pattern from an
> undefined "intellectual esthetic sense" seems to me to be solid
> evidence of the existence of such a higher level.
Hi Platt
You are most welcome. Back in the Lila Squad days you were the
one who saw this "beyond Intellect" development by pointing to the
moral code that Pirsig postulates between the levels and the
FOURTH (which will be the one between Intellect and a possible
higher development (Lila p.307):
"Finally there's a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code.
He supposed you could call it a "code of Art" or something like that,
but art is usually thought of as such a frill that that title
undercuts its importance......."
I agree vehemently with you that the judgement can't well
be ....
> entirely a matter of intellectual or social conditioning or latched
> to the biological or inorganic levels. To borrow a Wilberism, our
> sense of beauty seems to "transcend but include" the other levels.
> But, I could be wrong.
No, you are not wrong ...not in my opinion :-)
Bo
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