From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Fri Jun 10 2005 - 16:37:44 BST
Matt and MD.
On 8 June you said:
> To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what you are reacting against.
> Like Ham, you think Paul and I are postulating a "mind," an
> irreducible substance that stands against "matter."
Mind and everything aside, I saw this your post and at first glance
took it to be just another non-understanding one, only today did I
study it and my jaw dropped: Finally one who UNDERSTOOD,
agreement or not is a minor point right now because all
"rejections" up to now has been from it baffling every forum I
have participated in. Really, this is all I need write, but let the rest
run its course.
> But I'm not sure
> where you are pulling that out of and it certainly doesn't cohere with
> the rest of what I take Paul to be saying. The only way to read us as
> saying there is a "mind-like realm" is by reading _any_ description of
> what it is humans do when we say they are "thinking" as being a
> demarcation of the "mind."
No, I do not yell foul play every time a person writes "in my mind"
or "comes to mind" or any other such manner of speech.
> But that would mean that you'd be saying
> we have a mind, too. So you must not mean that, but I'm not sure what
> you mean.
I think you DO understand perfectly. See later on.
> You say that the SOL is opposed to all this, but I have no idea how.
> I could ask the same silly questions of you: what has SOL? Where does
> it reside?
A theory does not reside anywhere within itself. Newton's Physics
postulates a physical reality subject to its laws, but is nowhere
inside this reality. Thus the MOQ - or the SOL interpretation of it -
is nowhere inside the MOQ; it is the Quality Reality!
The S/O Metaphysics however has such an enormous (gravity)
pull that people automatically see thinking as taking place in the
mind of the mind/matter reality. Most people here speak of the
MOQ, but has not moved an inch away from SOM, which is the
cause of all this confusion.
> But the whole point of Pirsig's formulations is to
> eliminate these substances that "have" things.
Pirsig's rejecting "substance" was because it obviously doesn't
meet the requirements of "matter" (of yore). Only an inorganic
level of VALUE can explain its elusive quality.
> What I take Paul and I
> to be saying is that when Pirsig dissolves the substances of yore
> (like mind and matter) into static patterns,
"..substances of yore like mind and matter" ..?? Mind has no
substance - even of yore. The MOQ rejects the S/O
(mind/matter) division as fundamental and replaces it with its own
Dynamic/Static one. And THEN the said static patterns. It is this
initial metaphysical about-turn that people passes too lightly over.
> he's saying that "things"
> don't have these patterns, all there is too _things_ are patterns. A
> "mind" doesn't have intellectual patterns, all the mind is is a
> collection of static intellectual patterns.
"Things" are static inorganic patterns, while life and societies
hardly can be categorizes as things. Regarding the intellectual
level ...phew! Your formulating shows the underlying SOM
premises and I must really ask: What philosophical revolution is
the MOQ if (for instance) SOM's idealist "everything is mind"
appears as "everything is intellectual patterns"?
> I'm not sure what "inter-intellectual struggle between its objectivism
> and subjectivism" you think Paul and I are embroiled in that you
> aren't.
MOQ's intellectual level is the S/O divide. And if the MOQ is
drawn into it you get these "explanations" how the levels really
are ideas ...etc.
> I mean, you sound even more idealist than Pirsig when you
> say, "the MOQ it is not part of intellect. Intellect is part of the
> MOQ!!!"
More MOQish than Pirsig perhaps? I have this hunch that Pirsig
after his breakdown didn't dare continue Phaedrus original (SOL)
insight and chose a more safe path, but LILA does present
intellect as the S/O, this about it being just one intellectual pattern
messes it up.
> It is very hard to interpret that proposition as not being
> idealist. The question that begs to be asked is, "So, where is the
> MoQ?" But you don't want to be an idealist, so what exactly are you
> saying?
I am saying that the intellectual level is our present subject/object
reality, of which the idealist/materialist (or is it pragmatist?) is
another offspring.
> You don't want, apparently, to interpret the Metaphysics of Quality as
> an intellectual pattern. Then what is it? What are intellectual
> patterns that the MoQ is not one of?
This will be a repetition but I love it ;-) Yes, it is the subject/object
derived patterns and the many "logies" and "nomies" that they
have spawned.
> As far as I can tell, there is
> zero problem in saying that "Quality" and "Dynamic Quality" did not
> exist before Pirsig invented them. You would take this as blasphemy,
> but why?
Er .....I used it to show how this SOM-inspired (idealist) argument
backfires on the MOQ. My own position is that a theory changes
the element of reality it treats: Newton's gravity theory changed
the heavenly bodies' orbits to the workings of gravity, while it
before had been the workings of Ptolemaios' crystal spheres.
Pirsig's point is that before Newton it WAS crystal spheres and
OK, from a somish point of view you really can't disprove it, but
does it matter? We see the universe from the first day as obeying
gravity, don't we?
This goes for the MOQ too. It is a metaphysics - a theory of
everything - and consequently changes EVERYTHING. Reality
becomes a Quality Reality. But treating it as another Aristotelian
da-dee-dum with SOM as the premise will lead to nothing but
confusion.
> We're not saying that the _experiences_ of Quality and DQ
> didn't exist previously, just as we aren't saying that rocks didn't
> exist before humans created the word "rock" to deal with them.
The language example is a very good demonstration of the
idealist trap. If someone says that everything is language -
meaning subjective - it can't be disproved in other way that the
assertion is language too and thus invalid.
> Pirsig
> created the terms "Quality" and "Dynamic Quality" to deal with a set
> of experiences, mainly having to do with the experience of reading
> philosophy. Philosophy is the generalized area of discourse where we
> describe what we do, how we exist, and what the best way is to do
> these things. Pirsig entered that discourse and used the terms
> "Quality" and "DQ" to correct some of the problems that were being
> engendered by the language, the descriptions, the tradition of
> philosophy was using at the time. He did it because he saw these
> problems as being examples of how the discourse of philosophy wasn't
> doing a very good job of helping us deal with our experiences of life.
> Some of the experiences traditional philosophy wasn't doing very well
> with by Pirsig's estimation were value(s), mysticism, and insanity.
Maybe Pirsig the later "annotator" and paper-writer motives, but
my source is Phaedrus and his original Quality insight.
> I think you might take the asking of the question, "Where/what is the
> MoQ?" as being part of the SOMist problematic. But I think you've
> forced yourself into such questions. It seems as though you deny
> everyone else the status of being beyond SOM, but the only way to do
> that would be subsume _everything_ under the MoQ, as if the MoQ were
> reality, which is what you sound like you're doing when you exclaim
> "Intellect is part of the MoQ!!!" But shouldn't you be able to answer
> questions _inside_ the MoQ, after the shift away from SOM, questions
> like, "What are rocks?", "What are ideas?", "What is the MoQ?"
This is spot on! MOQ IS a new metaphysics i.e a new reality.
Pirsig speaks as if metaphysics-writing is a popular pastime, but
no-one has ever done that before.
> And if its the case that you can (which it had better be), why don't
> you interpret Paul and I as answering questions _inside_ the MoQ's
> compass, post-SOM? Presumably because you don't think we are
> post-SOM, but, again, I have no idea why.
I don't want the MOQ destroyed .... by you I have no fear, but
Paul acting an interpreter is more dangerous.
> The only things you point
> to seem to be huge misunderstandings, because the things you point to
> would seem to make you as much as us a SOMist.
This last about making me a SOMist I would like you to
elaborate. Otherwise you seem to see what's at stake and that is
no minor thing, rather a breakthrough. No sarcasm.
Yours most sincerely.
Bo
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