Scott and Company
I have been following your heroic effort in the "Map/Territory" debate and am
generally on your side because you see the somish undertones here, but
you read too many books (grin) and try to make your favourite authors'
argument into MOQ arguments and that does not always jell. On 2 Sep. you
wrote (to Erin):
> What I object to in the phrase is its implied nominalism, that words
> and ideas are "mere" words and ideas, while the territory is somehow
> independent of words and ideas. Here's Kuhlewind:
> "Nominalism assumes that thinking is identical with words, that there
> is no thinking without words. Nominalism forgets that words receive
> their meaning from and through thinking, and does not see that this
> *something*, to which a word refers, must already be *that*. To get a
> name, a thing must first be an "idea". The belief that anything could
> exist without an idea is anti-Logos....Naivete is the common trait of
> all diseases of consciousness out of which have arisen both the dogma
> that there can be a reality without cognition and the doctrine of a
> spirit which one cannot know [agnosticism]."
Is Kuhlewind really saying that "all we have are maps"? He rather says that
there are no words without IDEAS which makes words=map and
ideas=terrain ... which is the start of the S/O on its road to a full-blown
metaphysics . Plato's shadows/idea idea (!) which turned into
substance/form with Aristotle ...and mind/matter by and by.
> Paticular words can of course be changed and swapped out, so it is
> possible to translate between languages, and languages can change. So
> when you ask "Unless you don't swallow that int & soc is subjective
> and bio and inorganic is objective?", my answer is yes, I do swallow
> it, and admire Pirsig's coup in devaluing the words "subjective" and
> "objective". In SOM, of course, they are central. In the MOQ they are
> just labels for two sets of sq, one that we know through perception,
> the other through conception.
> But this sounds a lot like the internal/external.
Regarding Pirsig's way to contain the SOM it has been (mis)used by various
persons to reinstate the SOM (Gary and 3WD) Pirsig says that inorg+bio.
patterns are OBJECTS and soc+ intell. are SUBJECTS, but the said
persons use it in the "objective/subjective" sense and that brings us straight
into the internal/external.
> First, I do not
> consider the internal/external distinction an illusion. It is, as you
> note, presumed in most all of our daily preoccupation. On the other
> hand, the distinction is not fixed. Before the rise of the
> intellectual level (according to my version of the MOQ), the internal
> did not exist, or at least did not exist in the way it does to us.
> That is, concepts also came "from outside". And, in mystical
> Awakening, by most accounts, the internal/external divide is
> transcended. So for *metaphysics* (assuming one agrees with all this),
> it is important to do as Pirsig did.
You are right, but now you are into the SOT way of containment. The
intellectual value is that of the subject/object, inside/outside....etc. divide and
of immense value, yet a mere static level. Yet the said divide keeps popping
up - in a metaphysical sense! - again and again: Words/reality, map/terrain,
menu/food, food/taste and so on, as if a sutle variant will finally solve the
quandary, but no way ...except ...See below.
> One last point (before Bo beats me to it :). The subject/object
> divide, though temporary, is a necessary transition step, between what
> Barfield calls "original participation" and "final participation". It
> is an essential step in the development of self-consciousness, but it
> is not the last step.
He, he, thanks for mentioning me, and for the very relevant comments that
follow. Arriving at this point however, let's compare notes. The comment that
you made to Platt ...about admitting to the map argument in the sense that
there is nothing but maps, I commented by saying that this is only a thin line
from denying the map/terrain divide altogether. My own argument is that the
objection is words, maps ...etc. too. These two (counter-)arguments are
related, but leaves a disappointed feeling ...one stoops to the same level.
Don't you agree?
My final solution is as always the SOLAQI. It looks as if you agree on the first
part (SOT/SOL) but I haven't been able to figure out your attitude to the last.
Anyway I'll try to sum it up as it applies to the map/terrain problem. A
metaphysics (in the pirsigean sense ) is a self-contained reality and the
MOQ leaves a clean cut behind: The parent reality (SOM) is suddenly seen
as the intellectual level (of its own level system). In this view ALL levels were
"metaphysics" of the era when it was top notch, but as a new (metaphysics)
level established itself it automatically made its predecessor part of itself. I
put quotations mark on to show that the lower levels weren't/aren't language-
based, but it doesn't make a difference.
This makes the MOQ impervious: All arguments about it being a map can
be brushed off as the lower value (intellect) devouring the higher (the
Quality), while seen as an intellectual pattern, which IS the map/territory view
itself, it is lost. The SOL interpretation makes the MOQ into a metaphysical
counterpart to Quantum Mech. which explains/predicts everything perfectly,
but is sheer nonsense if interpretated from Newtonian physics.
As always in my opinion
Bo
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