From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Fri Sep 05 2003 - 04:33:51 BST
Paul,
I won't be responding in detail. You seem to be thinking that what I am
doing is in effect to partially restore SOM, when all I want to do is keep
the philosophical meaning of subject and object around in our discussion, so
that we can consider them in an anti-SOM way in a deeper way than Pirsig
does. It appears that the problem is that I need to explain better the role
of the logic of contradictory identity in my approach to the MOQ. Perhaps a
little intellectual biography might help.
I read, and loved, ZAMM when it came out. Years later, but before Lila came
out, I had my Aha! realization that I described recently to Andy, which was
that a computer couldn't be conscious because no spatio-temporal mechanism
could be. At that time, recalling ZAMM, I realized that the move to make was
to treat awareness as prior to the separation between one supposed
space-time thing that is aware of another supposed space-time thing.
Awareness creates the subject and object in each act of experience (in
humans at this stage of our evolution), just as Pirsig had said for Quality.
In other words, Quality and awareness are the same thing, just that one
emphasizes the value in experience, and the other emphasizes knowing, or
perceiving.
Then Lila came out, and I read it and was somewhat disappointed. I later
realized that this disappointment was that it didn't address things that I
had been thinking about, in particular that awareness/Quality was not only
prior to subject and object, but also prior to space and time (see Samuel
Avery's "The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness" for an interesting read
on this theme). But once I got over that somewhat parochial view, I saw that
Lila was Good Stuff.
Except for the lack of, let's say, appreciation for the S/O divide. Here, as
I've said many times, Barfield's account of the rise and value and
disease-aspect of the intellectual level is superior to Pirsig's, but as
I've also said, that does not detract from what Pirsig was trying to do in
Lila, namely to show how morals conflict. But with the demotion of the S/O
divide to a static pattern of intellectual quality one loses the ability to
integrate Pirsig with Barfield. The same goes with what Bo calls the
annotating Pirsig's definitions of the intellectual level.
Barfield is just as anti-SOM as Pirsig, as is Coleridge, and as am I. But we
need the concepts of subject and object to make our point. Which is that
though all -- or most all -- our experience comes in S/O form, that form is
NOT primary. Prior to that is awareness, or Quality, or Intelligence, or
Love -- there are 99 names of God -- which produces that form, and all other
forms. But the S/O form is particularly typical of how we see ourselves (as
even that phrase indicates). (From your comments, it might be better to say
that we describe all our experience as coming in S/O form, but the
distinction is no different -- see below -- as that between saying that
everything is in DQ/SQ form, or is described in DQ/SQ form)
Furthermore, that form is not of two things, a subject and an object, and
this is where the logic of contradictory identity (or what Coleridge calls
polarity, and what the Taoists call yin/yang) comes in, and that is that on
analysis, the subject is seen to constitute the object, the object is seen
to constitute the subject, yet they are at the same time diametrically
opposed. This same logic pops up on analyzing a number of term pairs, such
as continuity/change, being/becoming, and one/many.
And it pops up on analyzing DQ/SQ. Of course these are undefinable (n.b, SQ
is just as undefinable as DQ, though one can categorize instances. How does
one define "pattern" except in some equivalent term, like "form",
"structure", "system", etc.). That they are a polarity can be seen in that
DQ without SQ would be nothing. It requires SQ to "exist", and of course SQ
requires DQ. But DQ/SQ is more general than subject/object, which latter
only occurs -- as far as we can tell -- in the human intellect, while DQ/SQ
is at all levels.
Nor is there any conflict with what I am saying (which is just repeating
what others have said) with Zen philosophy. Nishida, from whom I got the
phrase "logic of contradictory identity", was a long-time Zen practitioner.
The history of the logic goes back to Nagarjuna, one of Zen's heroes. The
logic of contradictory identity is not a thinking that tells us what
enlightenment is. It is a means of clearing out debris, like SOM. In terms
of the MOQ, it is a way to remind us that the DQ/SQ distinction is also
self-contradictory. There is no self-existing DQ. There is no self-existing
SQ. There is only their mutual and simultaneous constitution and
contradiction.
Furthermore, since the S/O form is so familiar to us (it *is* us as we see
ourselves in our fallen state), it is our avenue to
understanding/not-understanding DQ/SQ. As I said a while back, while the MOQ
gets rid of a lot of SOM dualist platypi, it does not get rid of the
many/one dualism. The logic of contradictory identity doesn't get rid of it
either, but it recognizes it as another name for DQ/SQ. And in the
subject/object form we experience it in action: Awareness produces the many,
and in the same productive act, turns it back into one.
All of this is lost if we just try to not think in terms of philosophical
subjects and objects. Indeed, I see that attempt as falling into the
pre/trans fallacy. We need to work through and transform the S/O form, not
reject it. The major act in "working through" it is to see that S/O is
self-contradictory, that I, as subject, have no permanent self-existence.
But though it is self-contradictory, it is real. Hence pictures 9 and 10 in
the Ox sequence. Emptiness is not other than form, form is not other than
emptiness. The S/O form is completely real and completely empty.
- Scott
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