From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Sep 15 2003 - 06:08:33 BST
Scott mainly, a PS for Paul.
On 13 Sep. you said (to Paul):
Paul:
> > In a nutshell, it seems to me that trying to bring
> > Coleridge/Barfield and Pirsig together doesn't work and doesn't help
> > in understanding the vocabulary of either.
> I think I agree. I also think that Coleridge/Barfield's metaphysics is
> the one I need to work with, and not Pirsig's.
Too bad, but just for curiosity's sake, is there a Coleridge/Barfield
metaphysics? If so what is its first postulate? No sarcasm but there
are plenty philosophers who claim that the subject/object division is
wrong, but has anyone other than Pirsig seen it as a SOM and
replaced it by another metaphysics? I have asked for this each time
people ask us to look to this and that philosopher who has said the
same thing only much better than Pisig. I Haven't got an answer yet
that I remember.
I have myself referred to Peirce, but only that he went part of the way
and if completed could have reached the same goal as Pirsig. You
wrote no more about Peirce BTW.
> I'll state my reasoning
> here as to why this is the case for me, but I am not at this point
> trying to give a detailed argument for others. That will have to wait,
> probably for an essay, since it would require a point by point
> comparison of the reasoning of both Barfield and Pirsig. Don't know
> whether I'll ever get around to it.
I hope you will come to your senses long before that. :-)
> In any case, my interest is in the mind. Pirsig puts the mind as the
> fourth static level.
He did not ..put the mind as the fourth static level .. until Lila's Child,
it's been a deteriorating from the original insight in ZMM where Value
was seen as giving rise to the MIND/MATTER divide, over LILA where
the social and intellectual levels are the subjective ones, to LC where
he delivers the definition of intellect being synonymous with mind.
You, Scott, a long-standing member and a knower of Pirsig's work
knows this, so why zoom in on that last one which not only makes the
MOQ a travesty but a silly one in addition? With the mind-intellect
definition as premises your criticism may be valid, but it is not the
TRUE MOQ.
> That means, I take it, that not only the products
> of mental activity (i.e., thoughts) are static, but that mental
> processes (ie, thinking) are also static. So if I am studying the
> mind, we have a static process in the form of a subject studying an
> object, which is mind studying mind. But in the MOQ, the mind is not
> an object, so this phraseology is disallowed. This seems like needless
> obfuscation, as it is readily used by other philosophers, SOM and
> non-SOM.
I am of course tied hand and foot confronted with this because you
can only refer to Pirsig, but Phaedrus of ZMM is my reference and his
"definition" was that pre-intellectual awareness gives rise to the
subject/object realities - of which the mind/matter is the modern
variety (I see that you keep a discussion going about nominalism
versus universalism which was the Medieval variety). Thus your
criticism has no relevance for the real MOQ.
> But worse than this is that there is no creativity allowed for me (or
> for Shakespeare, for that matter), since all creativity, that is, the
> production of new static patterns of value, is assigned to DQ.
DQ gives plenty room for creativity, but if your complaint that intellect
is a static level an as such "non-artistic" I agree. Yet, Shakesparian
plays written ...etc. were not motivated by intellectual value, nor was
cave paintings motivated by social value, yet everything is seen
through their era's glasses: The cave paintings enforced the common
myth, Shakespeare's works explored the individual's mind ..which is
intellect seen from intellect.
But it is from the MOQ "level" we are supposed see things The levels
below are blind to anything but their own value, particularly is intellect
blindness striking as is the strongness of its glasses; you all seem to
hypnotized by it.
Sincerely
Bo
PS for Paul who had said :
> > The point of the DQ/SQ distinction is that "mind" [static
> > intellectual patterns] and "nature" [static inorganic-biological
> > patterns] arise from something which is neither mind nor nature
> > [Dynamic Quality].
"Mind" (or the subjective realm of SOM) is covered by both the social
and intellectual levels. (Not that I like it ... as Jonathan says ;-)
> > So although in a Dynamic understanding they are
> > the same [undifferentiated], in a static sense they are different
> > patterns. As such, as no static differentiation carries over into
> > Dynamic Quality, I think that seeing thinking, or "subject" [static
> > intellectual patterns] as synonymous with Dynamic Quality defeats
> > the purpose of the division.
Of course Scott is right, "thinking" (whatever that is) has nothing to do
with the intellectual level, rather is another name for all those aspects
of existence that can't be caught in any static mesh. You Paul who is
so keen on pointing to the nameless "continuum" should be the first
to admit that DQ has countless names to it.
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