From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Tue Jun 07 2005 - 17:59:35 BST
Ham and interested parties
The enigmatic assertions from Paul stem from what I commented
in my message to Allen the other day, but I will repeat it in a
more consistent manner. The source is to be found here:
"Lila's Child" annotation #97:
"Within the MOQ the IDEA that static patterns of value
start with the inorganic level is considered to be a good
idea, but the MOQ itself does not start before sentience.
The MOQ - like science - starts with the human
experience. Remember the early talk in ZMM about
Newton's law of gravity. Scientific laws without people to
write them are a scientific impossibility"
In its time this plus an additional comment by Pirsig (page 564):
It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see
that although "common sense" dictates that inorganic
nature comes first, actually common sense which is a set
of ideas has to come first. This common sense is arrived
at through a huge web of socially approved evaluations of
various alternatives. The key term here is evaluation,i.e.
quality descisions. The fundamental reality is not the
common sense or the objects and the laws approved of
by common sense, but the approval itself and the quality
that leads to it."
... was intensely discussed in the a thread called "What comes
first" and the excellent thinker/writer David M. Buchanan who at
that time had not discarded his "common sense" protested this,
but for some strange reason he was convinced by Paul and has
since shied these things like the proverbial plague.
But what is Pirsigs motives for these impossible utterings that has
done so much damage to the MOQ? He refers to ZMM and the
argument that Newton's theory of gravity were nowhere before
Newton, but this argument does not deny that there were apples
and an earth to which they fell before Newton so this does not
come close to the shocking annotation which says that the notion
of the static inorganic level (being Quality's first manifestation) is
a good idea. How does he manage to avoid seeing that by this
logic the biological, social and intellectual levels also are good
ideas. And where does ideas reside? Yes, how does the MOQ
itself avoid falling prey to this idea logic?
My explanation is Pirsig's failure to heed his own insight that
SOM is rejected and only argues against its objective side by
using SOM's premises of a subject/object (metaphysical) divide
from which it's child's play to prove that everything is in our mind.
But the subjective side is also rejected (I may provide quotes)
and by the same premises it is just as easy to prove that there is
no mind without matter. The MOQ has left behind the SOM (in
my opinion by making it its own intellectual level) and in its
metaphysical system the above annotation is - sorry to say - plain
rubbish. In the MOQ there is no mind that create ideas about the
sequence of its own static levels. The inorganic level is Qualitys
first fall-out and intellect the last. Full stop!!
In LILA there is nothing about ideas as the primary reality. Paul
will of course tell you that it is Quality that creates the ideas, but it
doesn't change a thing, if the inorganic level is an idea, then
intellect is an idea, and the whole MOQ (as an intellectual pattern
according to him) is an idea too. Yes, by the same toke logic
there was no Quality before Pirsig. Point to it ...etc.
Enough
Bo
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