On 16 Mar 2002 at 14:16, David Buchanan wrote:
> 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.
David and G.
There came a lull in the political storm. Hope it's over and not just the
"eye"passing by, anyway I think you have picked the central issue.
me from old:
> > 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....
Slipping round the MOQ ... shouldn't be so difficult to understand nor that of
nothing going outside a metaphysics. That is why SOM is so important to the
understanding of the MOQ. As the first philosopher ever Pirsig speaks of a
subject/object metaphysics, before it had been REALITY AS IT IS. By naming
it, pointing to it, he broke its spell ...the MOQ slipped round the SOM.
> 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.
Based on the SOM-Intellect interpretation the above failure is due to intellect
peering down on existence, it recognizes no levels or anything and it would be
impossible to admit to any cultural derivation because "culture" is one of its
own derivatives (the 'S') and it would be absurd if that should be its cause.
This is the crux of the matter and why the MOQ - now - can't be culturally
derived because it has taken over the metaphysical relay pin. You will also
understand why I so badly want the MOQ to be a rebel intellectual pattern, it
started as an intellectual pattern, but as the metaphysical system started to
unfold it became intellectually disagreeable ...because Intellect as the ruling
"metaphysics" cant have a metaphysics within itself.
Above I spoke about Intellect-as-metaphysics (SOM) looking back on
existence, now it is the Quality-as-metaphysics which is the "alta vista" and in
its perspective the said "cultural derivation" has become intellects social roots
(something that you have shown so eminently). But - now - to turn the
mythological past against the MOQ is exactly the same impasse as in SOM's
case ....making the social level the source for the system itself. Somewhere
the buck must stop.
> 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.
I agree to the first. The subject/object distinction is of great value - the
Intellect IMO - but its problem is not the dismissal of non-material realities,
there were periods when this was highly regarded and many still thinks so. No,
no, the problem is the fact that this divide isn't reality AS IT IS - this is shifted
to the Dynamic/Static one!
> 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.
I agree because this is my opening argument in another form and I think our
dispute has resulted in a clarification, by now you can't avoid seeing the
implications. Once the SOM's cultural roots were revealed it lost its magic and
became a pattern of the the bigger MOQ (that slipped around it) but the new
M carrier can't be such treated without becoming a sub-something to another
system.
> 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.
100% agreement.
Bo
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