From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Fri Sep 05 2003 - 16:22:28 BST
Paul,
> In response to my request to Bo, you described some problems, and I
> really wanted to understand what they were. As far as I could see, your
> problem with the MOQ was that it doesn't agree with your experience,
> which was fine.
Not really. In one area, that of characterizing the intellectual level, it
doesn't agree with my thinking, what I've learned from other thinkers.
> I see that below it is also a problem to you that you
> cannot integrate Barfield with Pirsig without changing the MOQ. All I'm
> trying to do is see past the solutions to find the problems for my own
> contemplation and to bring them out on their own. I rarely see the two
> separated out in posts, so I'm trying to zoom in on them to see what the
> problems actually are.
>
> Scott:
> 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.
>
> Paul:
> See, here is something I'd like to go into:
>
> "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."
>
> I was trying to discuss how the S/O divide is laid out in the MOQ to see
> if we agree on that for a start. I don't think we do.
In the MOQ, it is called a static pattern of intellectual quality, no? That
is what I am proceeding from, and objecting to. It makes it sound as though
somebody a few millenia ago had the *thought* "I am a subject and I observe
objects", and everybody else said "That's a great thought". Reading
Barfield, one understands that people for a long time could not have this
thought becuase they *were not* subjects opposed to a world of objects. They
did not have their own thoughts at all.. But consciousness evolved into the
S/O form, producing the intellectual level. Something that produces the
intellectual level cannot be a static pattern of the intellectual level.
>
> Scott:
> The same goes with what Bo calls the
> annotating Pirsig's definitions of the intellectual level.
>
> Paul:
> Also, I think that "annotating Pirsig" is the same as "ZMM Pirsig",
> "Lila Pirsig" and "SODV Pirsig". Again and again I see "annotating
> Pirsig" used to refer to a change in direction but I've yet to see
> anybody explain why this is so.
No, I don't see it as a change in direction. In LC, Pirsig says he felt he
had no need to define "intellect" in Lila, and he is correct. There is no
problem following him in how the intellectual/social distinction sheds light
on moral conflicts, and so forth. But in LC, partially in response to
SOLAQI, he does give defnitions. These definitions I find inadequate.
>
> Scott:
> 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.).
>
> Paul:
> I would argue that static quality is precisely that experience which we
> can, have and do define, linguistically or mathematically. Of course
> it's not one definition because static quality is all of our familiar
> reality. I would say that our education is pretty much about defining
> static quality or learning methods and language to define static
> quality.
I would agree if you replace "define" with "describe". Here I'm a
pragmatist. There are no bottoming out definitions, just redescriptions. But
that is tangential. After I sent the above, I thought that one could say
that a pattern is a many seen as a one, but that leads right into the logic
of contradictory identity, because of the "seen".
> Scott:
> 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.
>
> Paul:
> Are you just saying that it reminds us that our way of conceiving of our
> experience is superimposed by thought upon undifferentiated reality and
> is therefore not corresponding to a fundamental structure of reality? If
> so, I agree.
It takes it one step further, by putting into question "undifferentiated
reality". That too must not be reified. It is meaningless except insofar as
it gets differentiated. Nirvana is samsara. And, as I said in a post to Matt
a few days ago, it prevents us from thinking in terms of "corresponding to a
fundamental structure of reality". Structure = pattern = SQ, after all.
>
> Scott:
> 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.
>
> Paul:
> No, it invokes it. And it says that S/O is a further division of the
> many.
And there it goes wrong. The S/O divide is the simultaneous creation of the
one into the many, and the return of the many to the one.
>
> Scott:
> 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.
>
> Paul:
> This is where I don't get it. Are you saying that DQ=S and SQ=O? Or is
> it that DQ=O and SQ=S? What am I missing?
On first approximation, S is DQ and O is SQ. Franklin Merrell-Wolff says his
first enlightenment experience was experiencing the "Pure Subject", sounding
very much like Pirsig saying that Zen satori was experiencing pure DQ. The
absence of all form. His second enlightenment experience showed that his
first had a lingering dualism: to be absent of all form implies that there
is form from which he had escaped. His second told him that the formless and
form are one. Nirvana is samsara. So, S is O, and O is S, DQ is SQ, and SQ
is DQ, (and not) and we are neck deep in the logic of contradictory
identity.
>
> Scott:
> All of this is lost if we just try to not think in terms of
> philosophical subjects and objects.
>
> Paul:
> And so we should treat thoughts as objects?
Yes. That's what mindfulness does. Thinking, however, is not an object. It
is the S/O divide, and hence a case of the DQ/SQ divide. The value of the
S/O divide is the divide, as Bo has said. We naturally place the inorganic
and biological on the O side, and that lets us be detached from them,
allowing for science, and so forth. The next step is to detach ourselves
from social and intellectual SQ, to move them over to the O side as well, to
see that my thoughts are not me, but society's, or when truly detached, are
universal (as in mathematics). All that is left, then, is S as DQ. But see
above on Merrell-Wolff.
>
> Scott:
> 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.
>
> Paul:
> As I have tried to explain, I don't think the MOQ does reject subjects
> and objects, I think it embeds them into a larger metaphysical structure
> as static quality. In doing so, the difference between them is resolved
> into an evolutionary relationship. Pirsig just believes that there are
> better ways to talk about and understand static experience than subjects
> and objects, as four evolutionary levels is one way; the MOQ doesn't
> just pretend the experience isn't there. This is why I want to try and
> stay on the problem side of the discussion before jumping into
> solutions.
I too am embedding them into a larger metaphysical structure, but as a case
of DQ/SQ, not as static quality. One's descriptions are, to be sure, static,
but one's describing isn't. Thinking is traditionally assigned to the
subject, but is not static. Thinking is S-producing-O, DQ-producing SQ.
>
> Scott:
> 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.
>
> Paul:
> Okay, where does this leave the MOQ? What does it look like after such a
> transformation? DQ/SQ at the intellectual level is synonymous with S/O?
The MOQ accounts for moral conflicts beautifully, but I have to admit that I
find Coleridge's philosophy (as described by Barfield) provides a philosophy
of mind and nature (which turn out to be the same, operating on different
levels) that is more comprehensive that Pirsig's. The main point is there in
Pirsig: Quality, and the DQ/SQ distinction being the same as Coleridge's
"two forces of one power", but one needs to see that S/O is a case of those
two forces to see that our ordinary minds work the same way that nature
works, and more importantly, that nature works the same way our minds work.
- Scott
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