From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jun 22 2005 - 21:03:02 BST
Bo, Mike,
In the last few posts I've suggested that Bo's SOL-MoQ isn't as
controversial as it sometimes is made out to be. It's taken me a bit to
wind my way around what is exactly going on in it, but I think I understand
it well enough now to draw the appropriate conclusions.
The first thing I want to focus on is Bo's claim that the SOL-MoQ is
reality, that the Quality Reality replaced the SOM Reality. In trying to
draw out what this means, I've come to see that Bo is simply saying that a
metaphysics--a theory of everything--is most broadly construed as being
reality itself because it is simply a general way of talking about
everything, or talking about the reality we live in, which is the
metaphysics because reality is that which the metaphysics describes. This
is what leads Bo to say, in characteristic fervor, that the MoQ, being a
theory of everything, "consequently changes EVERYTHING." A switch in
metaphysics changes the reality we live in. The switch from an SOM Reality
to a Quality Reality changes everything.
The MoQ changes _everything_? I think we should pause and consider that.
For instance, does the way I eat a hamburger change? Does the way I count
money change? Does the way I play volleyball change? How about the way I
run away from tigers? I don't think any of these things change, at least
not in any discernible way. If most of the things we do on a daily basis
changed significantly because of our move from an SOM Reality to a Quality
Reality, then I would suggest we wouldn't be able to function in our
respective cultures. But we all do. Nothing has changed so drastically in
the way we function on a day to day basis that I think it warrants saying
that the MoQ changes _everything_.
The things that have changed are certain descriptions about some of our
other descriptions. For instance, the way we handle money. I count money
the same, I buy stuff the same, I rob people for cash for the same reasons.
But if we follow Pirsig's description of money as a static social pattern,
then our description of those more particular descriptions may change. If
we say that all the stuff we do with money on a day to day basis falls into
a "discourse on money," that is to say, a shifting discourse of all the
descriptions of what we do with money and the like, then we can see the MoQ
as providing a meta-commentary on that more particular discourse. It
doesn't change in a significant way what is going on in the discourse (it
may change in smaller ways, though, like in providing a slightly different
reason of why I mug people). _Philosophy_ is what we call these
meta-commentaries, these meta-discourses above the particular discourses. I
think it is important to notice the distinction (fluid, not hard and fast)
so we don't say bombastic things like "the MoQ changes _everything_!" We
can see Pirsig himself acknowledging this type of distinction when he talks
about ascending up the mountain of generality and, particularly, his saying
that pre-conditional valuation replacing causation does not change the
phenomena.
Saying that we MoQ people live in a different reality then SOM people, or
whatever, just doesn't make a lot of sense if taken too seriously. The
_vast_ majority of our beliefs have been left unchanged by the switch from
S/O to Quality as the center of our metaphysics. What _has_ changed is our
philosophical beliefs, which is only a very narrow subset of the sum total
of our beliefs. If we lived in a different reality in any significant way,
we'd be thrown into insane asylums. But most of us haven't been. And if we
were, I'm not so sure the reason we were could be attributed to believing in
Quality rather than SOM.
If we tone down some of Bo's rhetoric, his claims about living in a
different reality and adhering to the "true MoQ" (which is easily remedied
by Pirsig's claim that truth is simply a high Quality intellectual pattern),
then how much of the MoQ has Bo really changed? I think it should be
apparent that Bo's point that our Quality Reality is different than the SOM
Reality _toes_ the Pirsigian line, not diverges from it. If we tone down
the claim, then it becomes something analogous to the fact that when _any_
of our beliefs change, technically we live in a different reality. But
everybody understands that. The point that a Quality Reality is
significantly different _philosophically_ than an SOM Reality, still, is
Pirsig's and everyone already understands it to some degree. Its the entire
point of his books. At the least, I think, this is _not_ what is innovative
in Bo's SOL-MoQ, which makes his pressing of the point and excitement over
somebody "finally" understanding that particular point far in excess, to the
point of it becoming distracting and misleading.
The innovative part in the SOL-MoQ, as I've come to understand it, is Bo's
claim that the intellectual level is the S/O split. Right, duh. But, I
think what Bo means by this has been entirely obscure for a lot of people.
If I understand him correctly, Bo is saying that the mind/matter dualism is
the intellectual level. For more traditional Pirsigians, however, the
intellectual level is pretty much as Mike said it: "An intellectual pattern
is a *belief*, or set of beliefs." (I'm sorry to say, Mike, but that
definition wasn't very shocking. Its pretty much the standard account,
which explains Paul's shrugging agreement.)
I think the consequence of this difference is as follows (which I suggested
before):
If the intellectual level is simply the distinction between mind and matter,
then as far as I can tell, one would have to argue that the only real
"thoughts" we have are of material objects because one has simply
reconstituted the S/O Dilemma that Pirsig was trying to avoid. Sure,
Quality is everything. And we can split that everything into static and
Dynamic parts. But if then everything we do as people (since "we" are
collections of static patterns) is either "mind or matter," then that seems
to reduce the Quality insight to simply the acknowledgement that our
reality, our experience, is open ended. Not a bad addition, true, but
_everything_ else horrendous about the mind/matter dualism is left intact.
The alternative is the standard account that, I think, looks like this:
The intellectual level is made up of beliefs. Some of our beliefs are what
we call "philosophical." One set of these philosophical beliefs is what we
can call "SOM," the metaphysics revolving around the mind/matter dualism.
Another set we can call "MoQ," the metaphysics revolving around Quality.
The difference between the two is that the MoQ puts at the center of its
reality "valuing," which (I think) is another way of saying "the act of
differentiation." By doing this, we are able to say that what was true in
the mind/matter dualism is the difference between inorganic and biological
static patterns on the one hand and social and intellectual static patterns
on the other. But we don't have to take this, or any other distinction, as
fundamental. We can use them and discard them as need be because the act of
differentiating is at the bottom of reality. (I think that the act of
differentiation is at the bottom of the Quality insight is why it appears so
easy to extend "thinking" so far down the levels of static patterns. I
don't think it matters really what we call differentiation at each level,
whether we differentiate between thinking, problem-solving,
symbol-manipulation, and whatever else. It doesn't matter. I take a fair
enough description of what goes on at the intellectual level to be the
"analytic knife" of ZMM.)
In particular, it allows us to say, far less bombastically and
paradoxically, that the MoQ is an intellectual pattern, like SOM, and that
when we argue about the MoQ we are using intellectual patterns against other
intellectual patterns. All this rather than Bo's obscure "SOL-MoQ is
Reality and when I argue about the Sum Total of Reality I'm forwarding an
opinion about it." I'm not sure I fully understand how Bo gets around the
subjectivism that he finds so abhorent in the standard account's apparent
description when, as far as I can tell, an opinion would have to be in Bo's
mind, as opposed to matter, whereas for us, the horribleness of this
realization is defused.
Matt
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