Bodvar and y'all:
I'd like to respond to just the one paragraph that seems most crucial.
Forgive me if I've deleted something that you feel is very important.
On Tuesday BO wrote...
You repeat that Pirsig says that all intellectual descriptions are
culturally
derived and I most vehemently agree - as long as you are in moq-mode,
namely that Intellect is dependent on Society, but you have this tendency
to alter between this and one where CULTURE slips round the MOQ. Pirsig
shows that the Quality=Reality attitude has old roots, but nothing can go
outside a metaphysics ...not without becoming a new metaphysics.
Intellect has superseeded Society, but you can't make the MOQ itself -
which has CREATED the level system - subject to one of its its own levels
values ...there is a slightly off-set view here.
DMB replies...
I don't know what you refer to with the "one where CULTURE slips round the
MOQ". I also don't know what you mean to say with "nothing can go outside a
metaphysics...not without becoming a new metaphysics". But please let me
address the assertion surrounding those claims. If I understand what you're
saying correctly, you mean to say that Pirsig's insistence that all
intellectual descriptions must be culturally derived only counts within the
MOQ. You mean to say that this rule only applies within Pirsig's creation
because SOM doesn't recognize his static levels and therefore can't be
expected to follow this rule. Is that about right? Here, in loooong hand, is
where I'd disagree....
As I understand it, Pirsig is saying that SOM's failure lies in its
inability to recognize this derivation rule AND that this rule existed even
before Pirsig was able to describe it. He's saying that all intellectual
descriptions are culturally derived whether we know it or not. SOM's problem
is ultimately its materialism, its insistence that only substance is real
and all else is imaginary. I think the main problem does NOT lie in the
notion that objects like rocks and trees are different than subjective or
mental states, because they are different and even within the MOQ such
distictions are important. These kinds of distinctions are precisely what
gives rise to the four levels. The problem with the metaphysics of substance
is that it is dismissive of non-material realities. This dismissal is what
leads SOM to it failure, namely its failure to see that culture is just as
real as any physical thing. As a result, SOM misconstrues cultures and ideas
as illusory and then turns to physics and biology as the ground of all
that's true. But we already agree about that. The point, again, is simply
that SOM is culturally derived and always has been. SOM's problem is that it
doesn't understand its own source, doesn't think its own parents are real.
That's why she took biology's side against society and why its been so
disasterous. It fails to see a reality that exists independently of Pirsig's
description of it.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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