From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Mon Jan 27 2003 - 17:26:38 GMT
DMB, Wim and all:
>
>> Pirsig:
>> "The MOQ resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject
>> and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system
> of
>> understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are
>> social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious universes that
>> go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real
>> contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary
>> relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one."
>>
>> DMB added:
>> I think this is quite simple and clear. We see here that subjects and
>> objects are not abandoned or thrown out, but are embedded into a larger
>> picture. Objects lose their metaphysical bedrock status in this enlarged
>> vision, but they certainly don't disappear from the scene. I mean, the
>> purpose of the four levels is all about categorizing "things" and
>> "entities". Its about making sense of the world we all know and experience
>> everyday.
>
> Steve replied:
> Pirsig doesn't help us make sense of the world by merely subdividing
> subjects and objects into two new categories for each. Pirsig spends a
> great deal of time criticizing subject-object categorizations which won't
> improve by adding subdivisions. Pirsig is asking us to make sense of the
> world in a new way. What we perceive as individual entities and things and
> subject and objects that seem to "have no real contact with one another" are
> all participants in broader patterns. It is the patterns that can be
> classified into the static levels, not the entities that participate in
> uncountable patterns of up to four different types.
>
> DMB says:
> Hmmm. I think that by embedding subjects and objects into this larger
> system, Pirsig accomplishes two important things. The first one is to rob
> objectivity of its supreme status. That is to say he makes subjective
> realities just as real as rocks and trees. The second one is to make a
> distinction between two seperate kinds of subjectivity. SOM does not
> recognize the social level as a distinctly different sort of thing. The
> mind/body problem, for example, is a result of this lack of recognition.
> Pirsig's larger vision makes this and other problems disappear. In his
> bigger picture the social level is the connecting link between mind and
> body, between the intellectual and the biological. This is how he addresses
> the flaw in the intellect, the flaw that led so many thinkers to confuse
> criminals and saints. They didn't see that social values had for many
> thousands of years kept biological values under wraps. He's doing more than
> just re-naming subjects and objects as static patterns, he's a entire level
> of reality that SOM could not see. See?
Steve:
I don't understand how the MOQ dissolves the mind-body problem. As I
understand it, the mind-body problem is the question of how my willing my
hands to type causes my hands to type. Is that right? Could you explain.
>
> This is why it seems very easy to understand the first two levels. SOM
> already saw that clearly enough. It is when we come to the distinction
> between social and intellectual values that people tend to get mixed up.
> This is the novel part of Pirsig's view.
>
> By the way, the reason I posted the "monkey dance" is because it seems to me
> that we can see the very beginnings of the social level there. We can see
> the social level beginning to emerge out of the biological there.
Steve:
When you say, "This is why it seems very easy to understand the first two
levels. SOM already saw that clearly enough," it sounds as though you think
of the MOQ as an elaboration or extention of SOM.
If the levels are discrete we should be able to identify the exact instant
when the social level comes into existence. How would you recognize it?
Where do you see the social level emerging in the monkey dance example? Are
the monkey's becoming social level entities or is the social quality
emerging in the dance or somewhere else? This is in effect Pirsig's Zen
Koan that runs throughout ZAMM: Is the Quality in the subject or in the
object?
The answer as I understand it was supposed to be "neither", and if the
Quality is not in the object, then the object cannot be categorized as a
type of static quality.
Classifying entities into the four levels as you would like to do is an MOQ
influenced SOM but still SOM. In effect you are just treating some things
as objects that weren't previously thought of as objects. Still SOM.
Steve
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