From: Yale Landsberg (yale_landsberg@yalelands.com)
Date: Fri Sep 05 2003 - 12:04:49 BST
Gentlemen, I recently signed up for this mailing list and have been reading
your entries with admiration as well as interest. "Interest" because I read
"Art of" many, many years ago and was captivated by Persig's ideas; and
"admiration" for the general tenure of thoughtfulness that all of you
evidence in your well-thought out, temperate responses to each other. Yours
is indeed not the usual forum of ideas.
More to the point, I've had a few "Aha!" experiences of my own and have
recently written in a modern-day day Heraclitean-style a paper on what can
be seen to happen during a "tipping point" kind of Change from x to y. And
I think that my paper (in the form of a tale tale/dialogue) has MoQ aspects
although I am in no way an MoQ expert as you all are.
Thus, would some of you be so kind as to read slowly and carefully and
perhaps several times what is to be found at
http://yalelands.com/Rational_Rationale.pdf and then tell me where you think
R-R matches up with MoQ, and why? For example, I believe that quality is
approached by following certain situational guidelines and observing other
circumstancial guard rails, and I have come up with (or come upon) a
metaphysics that explains where these rules and regulations emerge from.
But you may see this aspect of MoQ quite diferently. BTW, please note R-R is
an attempt to convey Heraclitean ideas in the style of Heraclitus, and
therefore it can be humorous at least if you like puns, but it is also very
dense. Per Dr. Charles Kahn via Dr. Cynthia Freeland...
Kahn articulates three key assumptions about Heraclitus' style (p. 89): It
manifests linguistic density, resonance, and ordering. He explains these as
follows:
a.. linguistic density: a multiplicity of ideas are expressed in a single
word or phrase;
b.. resonance: a single verbal theme or image is echoed from one text to
another, so that their meaning is enriched when they are understood
together;
c.. ordering: ordering the fragments has some sort of linear effect,
leading from one point to another, as a plot leads through action to a
climax.
To get some very subtle ideas across to the reader, I have tried to use the
above elements where possible in the story. Thus, if you are like most
readers, you will gag on the puns. OTOH, if you are like some, you will see
these plays on words as food for thought, and hopefully enjoy digesting a
few of them. Thanks for any time you invest in reading my short story/tall
tale, and reflecting on my ideas relative to MoQ. I cannot promise you
will like R-R. I cannot expect you to agree with everything in R-R. But I
can guaranty that you will never have seen anything like it before, and, if
you read it slowly and pensively with a cautiously skeptical, but
inquisitive mind, parts of it will be very thought-provoking. YL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott R" <jse885@spinn.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:33 PM
Subject: Re: MD Dealing with S/O pt 1
> 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
>
>
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archives:
> Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> Nov '02 Onward -
http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
> MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Sep 05 2003 - 12:05:53 BST