From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Tue Jun 21 2005 - 12:55:26 BST
Hi Paul and DMB & interested parties
On 17 June you wrote to me who had said:
> > Agree, but this original insight is obscured by Paul and DMB
> > who --- maintains that the thought pattern called "common >
> > sense" comes --- first.
Paul:
> If you are going to insist on having these little digs, can you
> at least refer to something that I have actually written?
My referring to "common sense" relates to the "What comes first"
thread in August 03 and here's one post from you to DMB.
-----------------
> David Buchanan:
> Pirsig in a letter to Anthony McWatt:
> And in this highest quality intellectual pattern, external objects
> appear
> historically before intellectual patterns... But this highest quality
> intellectual pattern itself comes before the external world, not after, as
> is commonly presumed by the materialist."
> Paul:
> When you read this you seem to be equating "comes before" and "appears
> historically before" with some "objective" significance thus making the
> positions mutually exclusive. Remember that "before" and "after" are
> intellectual patterns and are therefore subjective.
"Before and after are intellectual patterns and therefore
subjective"!? Why not take it all out and say "they are words and
therefore just hot air"?
This is an invasion by SOM that the Inorg.+Org=objects ...etc.
method of encasing SOM allow. The S/O divide as
metaphysically valid is nil and void in the MOQ and cannot be
applied to the static hierarchy in this manner. Only as one level -
intellect - makes sense.
Before and after are are of course a logic which was applied by
the ancients of the social reality.
> David quotes:
> Pirsig in Lila's Child:
> "It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although
> 'common sense' dictates that inorganic nature came first, actually 'common
> sense' which is A SET OF IDEAS, has to come first.
> Paul:
> Yes, for example, the hypothesis of evolution has to come before
> evolution is verified, scientifically speaking. And on the source of
> hypotheses, here is a quote for good measure:
Darwin found evidence for evolution long before he formulated
his theory. Experience or value comes first, Both Pirsig and you
seem to upend the very foundation of the MOQ with IDEAS as
primary.
Why Pirsig says this I will never understand. Ideas here are
supposedly intellectual patterns where everything reside, but that
can't be as long as the intellectual LEVEL is the last one. Again
SOM polluting the MOQ.
Another LC quotation (#102) reveals his newfangled conviction
that SOM's idealism is the a way to acceptance for the MOQ. If
his idea had been a moqish Trojan Horse to invade SOM it would
have been understandably, but it doesn't sound that's way either.
Paul quoting ZMM
> "The formation of hypotheses is the most mysterious of all the
> categories of scientific method. Where they come from, no one knows. A
> person is sitting somewhere, minding his own business, and
> suddenly...flash!...he understands something he didn't understand before.
> Until it's tested the hypothesis isn't truth. For the tests aren't its
> source. Its source is somewhere else." [ZMM p.113]
Pirsig's Q insight came to him after meanderings through
intellect's premises that led him from one paradox to the next.
The insight surely was sudden, but preceded by many indications
of SOM as incomplete.
> David quotes:
> In the same letter Pirsig also says:
> "If cosmological evolution does not exist then the ordering of the four
> static levels in the MOQ would cease to be a viable basis for a moral
> framework."
> Paul:
> I think cosmological evolution would cease to exist when a better
> explanation of how "we" got here emerges from Quality or when the theory
> causes more problems than it solves, that is, when it loses its value.
I understand you perfectly, I had similar "insights" when a
SOMists (as we all were until hit by the MOQ) but applying these
to the MOQ is disastrous.
Look, SOM's scientific universe is replaced by MOQ's inorganic
level as DQ's first act, the details of it's emergence is left to
science to ponder. It is perfectly legal as long as science doesn't
claim metaphysical preponderance. The present big bang theory
may well be replaced by another one, but leaves the MOQ
unscathed. Likewise regarding DQ's second act - the biological
level - which has replaced SOM's biology ...metaphysically seen.
Scientific biology may come up with whatever theory how life got
started without affecting the MOQ as long as it - metaphysically -
is DQ at work. And so on upwards.
What is behind Pirsig's comments is an unwise mixing of SOM
and MOQ. He obviously found his SOM-based insight from ZMM
(about gravity nowhere before Newton) so "titillating" that he
couldn't resist it. But this backfires badly when applied to the
MOQ.
Yours sincerely
Bo
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