From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Jun 20 2005 - 10:25:45 BST
Continued from Part 1.
Matt said:
> I said that our (the current coalition of, as I would call us,
> pragmatist sympathizers) answer was that the MoQ is an intellectual
> pattern. You replied that "if Pirsig's container logic is valid it
> is grossly violated here." You're absolutely right, but part of our
> move is a repeal of this "container logic." That logic is dead
> wrong. It doesn't make sense and I've argued against it before.
> All we need is the claim that the MoQ is a better intellectual
> pattern than SOM. And so when it comes time to describe what we are
> doing when we are arguing for the MoQ over SOM, we can say that we
> are battling an outmoded intellectual pattern. But it doesn't look
> like you can say that. In fact, it doesn't look like you can say
> you can argue for the MoQ at all. It would appear that the switch
> from the SOM-Reality to the Quality-Reality is just something that
> mysteriously occurs, because to argue would be to use intellectual
> patterns, and intellectual patterns are the Subject-Object Logic.
Firstly, how could ANY level escape take place? As pointed to in
LILA, the inorganic conditions forbids life (even in SOM it's a
mystery) MOQ unites creation and evolution by postulating a
relentless dynamic urge to escape ALL static latches. Admittedly
the MOQ is not a level, but it is definitely "out of intellect"
(because intellect was S/OM) and shows all level struggle
characteristics. So if MOQ's postulates are accepted I very well
can argue for a "mysteriously occurrence".
I can't see the how your "battling an outmoded intellectual
pattern" removes the container logical bend. It's what creates it!
The MOQ contains the static hierarchy of which intellect is a sub-
set and can't well be a sub-set of intellect.
> The one move I see that is left to you if you go on in this fashion
> is to argue that the Quality-Reality is the reality that was always
> sitting behind SOM, its just that we didn't know it until now.
> Pirsig showed us that Quality "contains" SOM, thus preserving the
> "container logic."
Newton's Physics moulded physics in its pattern, not least the
past as the formation of stars and the galaxies (not in Newton's
time however) was explained by its laws. Thus the MOQ moulds
absolutely everything and now we see the quality reality as
always been "sitting behind the S/O reality".
> But to go this route you'd have to not only repeal the
> theory/reality divide, you'd also have to repeal the idea that
> Pirsig _changed_ reality, because now he didn't--he discovered it.
> We were always living in a Quality-Reality, we just didn't know it.
Didn't we - from the intellectual level - look back on the social
level with this attitude? They really lived in a subject/object
(scientifically explicable reality) but were too ignorant to know?
> Going
> this route, however, also commits you to the same problems of
> thinking of the MoQ as a fifth level that you'd repealed even
> earlier. The four levels are "surrounded" by the Quality-Reality,
> by the SOL-MoQ, but with the logic of discovery at work, with
> discovering that the Quality-Reality was the true reality sitting
> behind the SOM-Reality (which would have been true had it not
> claimed to be the True Reality), it commits you to an ascension
> paradigm, where we ascend beyond the SOM (which was right in its
> way) to the MoQ (which is more right).
Yes, I dropped the 5th. level because of the impossible static
quality pattern-patterns it invoked) but as said, the MOQ shows
the level-struggle characteristic versus intellect. Also the "joining
forces with your enemy's enemy) is present as its affinity for
social value (that angered the critics who reviewed LILA). It also
explains why social value (Aretê) was discovered as value itself
in ZMM.
> In the end, I'm not sure what is left. When I run through the
> possible directions of your argument, I either come up with the
> above dead-ends or end up pushing the SOL-MoQ into a position where
> any disagreement between what you are saying and what we are saying
> is pretty much verbal and uninteresting. So, what is the SOL-MoQ,
> what is it you are doing when you propound it, what are you arguing
> _for_? Not an intellectual pattern...so what?
We are at the end of our respective tethers now. These last
questions of yours are answered earlier. But again I must thank
you for your willingness to explore the SOL to its source, never
ever before have I seen it laid out so perfectly. What a relief!
And anyone who hasn't dropped his/her "common sense"
because Pirsig seemingly has rejected the SOL interpretation will
see that it is the MOQ.
> Bo said unrelatedly:
> Can you Matt show me anyone referring to a subject/object
> metaphysics, I mean in the sense of it having an origin and maybe a
> exit?
> Matt:
> Yeah, quite a few. I think it incredibly and dangerously naive to
> think that Pirsig is the only one to do anything like this. Scott's
> examples are people like Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit), Coleridge
> (?), and Barfield (Saving the Appearances). My favorites currently
> are Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature), Jeffery Stout (The
> Flight from Authority), Stephen Toulmin (Cosmopolis), Richard
> Bernstein (Beyond Objectivism and Relativism), Bernard Yack (The
> Longing for Total Revolution), and Susan Neiman (Evil in Modern
> Thought), to name a few. One of Sam's favorites, in addition to
> Toulmin, is Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue). One of DMB's
> favorites is Ken Wilber. And there are more: Jurgen Habermas (The
> Philosophical Discourse of Modernity), Michel Foucault (The Order of
> Things), Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology). And some older ones:
> Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil), Heidegger (Being and Time), Dewey
> (The Quest for Certainty).
I turned to my "Philosophy History" when Scott mentioned Hegel,
but nowhere did I find anything resembling Pirsig's pin-pointing a
SOM. I don't require the exact terms, but an emergence is
necessary - as is an alternative. Wilber? I have never really liked
the spiritual taint of his hierarchy and lacks an initial shift
resembling the Quality=Reality one. Barfield? His participation
scheme fits perfectly, but Scott is making it difficult because of
his insisting that the MOQ must adjust to Barfield's premises.
> Not all of these people agree. But they are all, in my estimation,
> working the same vineyard. I went on to a lengthier discussion of
> the very idea of Pirsig's "radical originality," but I'm not sure it
> is needed. It roughly revolves around that idea that, if Pirsig
> really was as radical as some people say he is, nobody would
> understand him. We would simply think he were unintelligibly insane.
> I think Pirsig would agree, what with his idea of "to step out of
> the mythos is to go insane."
Insane or not, to step out of a level's borders is necessary to see
it's outline and a greater reality beyond. Now that Pirsig
pioneered that we can do the same without much risk.
> For us to even understand him, and then to even agree, our
> entire philosophical culture is far enough along the track to throw
> out SOM
If I understand you, modern physics has by now undermined
SOM. Yes, but New Age "physics" mysticism does not help
without a complete overhaul like the MOQ.
Still impressed
Bo
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