From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Tue Jun 28 2005 - 05:58:14 BST
Paul and multitude.
26 June you said: (After I had said that .. In almost all of LILA he
(Pirsig) treats it Intellect) as SOL.
> Paul: No, Bo, he doesn't. In a fairly central section of LILA, it is
> stated that:
Pirsig:
> "The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between
> intellect and society, subject and object, mind and matter, by
> embedding all of them in a larger system of understanding. Objects are
> inorganic and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual
> values. They are not two mysterious universes that go floating around
> in some subject-object dream that allows them no real contact with one
> another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship."
Paul:
> This doesn't seem to be too unclear to me. And then there is the MOQ
> solution to the mind-matter problem, which he concludes by saying:
First of all I said that Pirsig treats intellect as SOL, the cited
passages aren't particularly about intellect and you know my
opinion about this way of integrating the SOM. It does not work.
> "The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links
> between these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two
> terms are missing: biology and society. Mental patterns do not
> originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society,
> which originates out of biology which originates out of inorganic
> nature."
SOM's platypus has merely been moved from a simple
mind/matter model to a complicated society-intellect/inorganic-
biological one. This is the weakest part of the standard
interpretation.
> This (inorganic level = matter, intellectual level = mind) contradicts
> SOL outright, does it not?
After having rejected SOM by much sound and fury, then is it to
signify nothing (to keep to Shakespeare) to implant it across the
static sequence is horrible. I don't like to criticize the master, but
this don't pass muster.
> However, as I've said to you before, there is nothing gained by anyone
> claiming the authority of Pirsig's "real" intentions. There is what
> we may call the ostensive MOQ, which is roughly what you would get
> from ZMM and LILA if you take into account the later, post-LILA Pirsig
> as qualifications of those two books. The SOL is what you can get if
> you read LILA selectively, make use of ambiguities, and largely ignore
> anything Pirsig has published post-LILA.
Yes, I have heard this before, but regrettably I can't let you
trivialize the MOQ ;-) Pirsig is old - damn I am old too - and
letters to him reveals that he is no longer Phaedrus. This may be
on the brink, but there once was a struggle over Jesus' teachings
and that a certain Paul won, history seems to repeat itself.
> I would like to stop arguing over which is the real MOQ and focus the
> conversation on the most important question - which is best?
The original one is the best, one moment back to the intellectual
level though. I said that LILA presents it as SOL and it does,
mostly as its objective part; as knowledge as science in other
words the "objective" half of SOM which is rejected as a
metaphysics, but is to be kept as a valuable "pattern". Do you
agree?
Now if intellect is the "O" where is the "S"? And here is the
fulcrum point of our year-long discussion. To keep SOM's
objective half as the intellectual level and then say that the S/O is
spread across the static hierarchy does not hold water. It must be
the intellectual level, all of it, every last bit - minus its
metaphysical quality that is.
And if so he should have railed against its subjective-idealist
aspect as much as its objective-materialist one. But to make it
sound as if the MOQ has any idealist affinity and forward some of
those "ideas comes first" comments only attracts NewAgers who
think its about harmony and peace on earth. It's about peace of
mind that comes from the greatest system forwarded since
Socrates and Plato instigated the SOM.
Bo
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