From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Fri Jun 17 2005 - 17:44:06 BST
Mike,
I have some comments on other things, before gettng to your nominalism
question,
MH replies to Bo:
I think the examples you give _must_ fall into the intellectual
category. Where else can they fit? Can they possibly be social, like
language? No. The Bible _uses_ language, but for a higher purpose than
mere communication. It attempts to present a picture of some kind of
truth. The examples you give are of "mythos" - the small shrub from
which grows the enormous tree of "logos", as described by Pirsig in
ZMM. Primitive the mythos may be, but it still is an attempt _by_
society to understand reality. I'm not saying that the Bible and the
Koran had no social component - they clearly did (the Ten Commandments
being a good example), but in as much as they attempt to describe
reality, they are mythos and primitive intellect.
Scott:
While agreeing with treating scriptures as mythos rather than logos, I think
it is a mistake to compare the two (mythos and logos) as variations on
"describing reality". Description only comes to the fore with logos, as it
presupposes the separation that lets one hold that which is to be described
at a distance.
MH replies to Bo:
I think this is too simplistic by far. Classic (I'm fairly sure that's
what you meant to write instead of "Static"?) corresponds to
intellect, sure. But Romantic quality with social quality? Do John and
Sylvia bear much similarity to Rigel and the Victorians described in
Lila? I think not. In ZMM Pirsig says that Romantic quality has to do
with "surface appeal", which I would say has something to do with
Dynamic Quality, or at least with non-intellectual value in general.
...
Scott:
You're right that the Romantic is not, or not necessarily social. But where
I think Pirsig, and myriad others, go wrong is seeing it as
anti-intellectual, with intellect being Classical. I would call them two
styles of intellect. The jazz musician is following musical rules just as
much as the Bach performer, just that the former will improvise much more.
Barfield has an interesting small book called "Speaker's Meaning", in which
he points out that speech (or writing, or art in general) is a matter of
balance between communication and expression, which could be recast as one
between Classical and Romantic.
MH nit-picks:
Yes, Phaedrus realised that the dialectical subject/object dilemma had
to be made subordinate to Quality. But! He arrived at this conclusion
by "reasonable" means, don't you think? Value-centric reason, as
outlined in ZMM and refined in Lila as the MOQ, can termed an
"expanded" form of reason, because it is capable of everything reason
was previously capable of _and more_. However, I think this is a
semantic issue. We are in agreement here except for the use of the
word "expanded". UNTIL, that is, you claim that following his insight
that subjects and objects are subordinate to Quality, he "identified
intellect as the S/O prism". I doubt that you will find precise
textual support for this, because it is slightly, but significantly,
simplistic. Throughout ZMM, he identified intellect, which you agree
corresponds to the Classic quality of ZMM, as the general chopping-up
of reality into forms and shapes and categories, _of which S/O is just
one of many possible chops_. I don't think you'll find Pirsig saying
in ZMM that intellect _only_ chops reality into subject and object,
because it clearly isn't the case.
Scott:
This last bit is where we should be paying attention to SOL (actually, to
Barfield, who covers this in depth). I don't think one can say that subject
(intentional subject, not subject as synonym for mind) and object are simply
a chopping of reality by the intellect. We can't say this because the S/O
divide is required for intellect. As above, with description, the separation
is required in order to *think about* something. (This isn't to say that all
intellect is in S/O form, that is, I agree with Pirsig that mathematics is,
in its pure form, not S/O, but one didn't have this pure form of mathematics
until intellect came on the scene.) The error of SOM, on the other hand, is
to think that the S/O split exists fundamentally. Instead, I see it as only
occurring *with* intellect. In ZMM, Pirsig says at one point that Quality
exists "between" the subject and object, and I think this is a better
statement than saying it exists prior to S and O, as he does in LILA. And I
would add that intellect (or Intellect) occurs between them rather than
prior to them as well.
MH continues:
In fact, if we agree that Classic quality equals MOQ's intellectual
level, then to understand the intellectual level we need only re-read
ZMM's excellent introduction to the notion of Classic quality, with
its myriad of hierarchies. Importantly, Pirsig points out that many
alternative hierarchies can be constructed to deal with the same
thing. To quote page 79:
"You get the illusion that all those parts are just there and being
named as they exist. But they are named quite differently and
organized quite differently depending on how the knife moves."
(Incidentally, Scott, if you're reading this, would I be right in
guessing that this is what you call "nominalism"?)
Scott:
No. Nominalism usually refers to a denial of the claim that concepts exist
in objective reality, or at least between the knowing subject and the known
object, claiming instead that concepts exist only in the knowing subject.
(Subject and object as mind and matter in this case). With the rejection of
SOM, this definition doesn't work, but the general error (in my opinion) of
nominalism continues in the belief that concepts are strictly a human
linguistic affair. My rejection of nominalism amounts to saying that
language is a universal affair, indeed, that all reality is semiotic, an
affair of communication/expression.
This does not imply that all of our concepts have a non-human reality. Just
the ones expressed in nature, which we may or may not have attuned ourselves
to. It also does not mean that nature can't be expressing itself in more
than one conceptual system at once, so we can carve it up in different ways,
because it expresses itself in different ways.
- Scott
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