From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Fri Sep 19 2003 - 20:48:02 BST
Hello Scott,
It may not be for me to jump in, but i merely wish to help if that is
possible?
Scott:
Paul and Platt (who responded similarly),
I'm clearly having trouble making my point clear :-). I've ranted before
about people confusing the grammatical subject and object (def. #4) with the
philosophical subject and object (#5 or #2), so I am not making that
mistake. The "I" is more than a figure of speech. It is a pole in a polarity
(a contradictory identity).
In brief, I find the idea that the X in X/SPoV is more SPoV just does not
work. It is on a par with the materialist answer to SOM: since the subject
is a mystery, assume it is more object. For Pirsig to make the "subject is
more SPoV" to work, he had to come up with this (thanks, Platt, for the
quote):
"By contrast the Metaphysics of Quality, also going back to square one,
says that man is composed of static levels of patterns of evolution
with a capability of response to Dynamic Quality." (Chap. 24)
This sweeps under the rug the mystery of how DQ and SQ can relate, by adding
the "capability of response" to SQ. This is arm-waving, the same sort that
materialists do in response to the question of how one complex set of
material objects can be aware of another set: it "just happens" when things
get sufficiently complex. On the other hand, if an ecology of SQ responds to
DQ, then it is dynamic, not static, or one has to say there is no identity
that "carries over" the pre-responding SQ to the post-responding SQ. Yet
there obviously is an identity (we know ourselves to be such), but it is
self-contradictory.
Mark:
In an essay which i hope will be available on the forum soon, this problem
can be cleared up nicely. Basically, all static patterns are in relationships
which each other, and some of these relationships are exceptional. The
exceptional relationships are the point at which DQ operates. Maybe an analogy will
help?
Imagine a seesaw balance, balancing you on one side and me on the other?
There is a pivot in between us which i would ask you imagine to be DQ. You and i
are static patterns. The relationship between you and me is, for the most part,
one of discrimination; one moment i am moving up - you down, at another time
the relationship appears to be reversed? But both you and i are a complete
system at all times, and at one very specific moment - when you and i are in
absolute balance - DQ is at its most intrusive: The point of balance is
extraordinary. Think about it?
What determines the next move at the point of utter cancellation?
It cannot be dealt with, and this is the mystery you point to. The MoQ does
not hand wave here - the MoQ postulates the conceptually unknown: DQ.
Mathematicians perform a similar move when they use 0 and the operator =
Scott
This is why the logic of contradictory identity is necessary. It has the
positive effect of letting one identify when one is going into error by
emphasizing one pole of a contradictory identity (aka a polarity) over the
other. In SOM, this is what happens when one chooses idealism or
materialism. In the MOQ, this happens in the above quote.
Mark
I totally disagree. I feel you fail to let go of DQ; rather, you dismiss DQ
as insignificant. That may be the source of your trouble? You cannot accept
that something so important cannot be understood, but which is in fact operating
at all times.
Scott:
Where Pirsig goes wrong (in my opinion, and in answer to Platt's query over
differing assumptions) is back at the beginning where he discusses the
mystics' objection to metaphysics. The mystics (according to Pirsig)
emphasize "undivided experience" over language and intellect *about*
experience. Well, many mystics do just that, but not all. But while all will
agree that language and intellect is a major problem, the problem lies in
limiting beliefs, not in language or intellect itself.
Mark:
Going back to the seesaw analogy, the system at one very specific and
exceptional point is undivided. Expanding this to patterns of value, it is possible
to envisage patterned differentiation's opening up to the influence of the
conceptually unknown: DQ in the MoQ.
Scott:
But Pirsig, influenced by nominalism, treats language and intellect as less
real in
comparison with this hypothetical undivided experience. I say hypothetical,
because all experience presupposes distinctions, if nothing else, the
distinction between the experience and the absence of the experience.
Indeed, experience happens *by means of* distinctions.
Mark:
I cannot speak to your assertion that Pirsig is influenced by nominalism,
except to say that i don't agree with that.
I feel you consistently place the cart before the horse? Experience in the
MoQ is primary with distinctions imposed later via ones culture. Again, in the
seesaw analogy, distinctions about what happened after the moment of
exceptional balance are not the moment of exceptional balance. One may experience a move
towards balance and a move away from it, but the moment cannot be
encapsulated.
In the MoQ, the motion towards and away balance is distinct as patterns of
value. Each side of the seesaw is inextricably entwined in four ways, not two.
And the four distinctions are responding towards and away from exceptional
relationships where DQ has maximum influence.
Scott:
And so we have (from an earlier post from Paul):
"I suppose "awareness" may be used tentatively but "thinking" is
definitely not synonymous with Quality."
Why not thinking?
Mark:
Thinking is an aspect of the seesaw motion, but DQ is the source of
exceptional relationships. I hate to bang away at the seesaw analogy, but thinking may
be seen as that which is not the moment of exceptional balance.
Scott:
The ability to think is just as mysterious as the ability
to be aware, or the ability to respond to DQ, or the ability to abstract, or
the ability to use language, or the ability to perceive value, or the
ability to experience. Furthermore, it is only through thinking that one
can dig out and overcome limiting beliefs, and thus grow. It is undecidable
whether such thinking is that of the little self or of the Big Self, but
then the little self *is* the Big Self (Franklin Merrell-Wolff's last
thought before his awakening was: there is nothing to attain. "You are
already That which you seek").
Mark:
Again the seesaw: That which you seek is actually that upon which the total
system is pivoted. You do see that do you not? It's a bit like a mouse in a
maze crying, 'Watch me choose my own direction.'
Through thinking you can come to see the importance of the pivot (DQ in the
MoQ) and adjust your cultural inheritance to the new way of conceptualising. I
feel you fail to do this, but rather continue to place the cart before the
horse.
Scott:
My conclusion (or assumption?), anyway, my message from the MOQ, with this
correction, is not that we should treat metaphysics as something one does,
like getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies, but that it is a road to
salvation. If, that is, it is oriented around identifying and removing
limitations, and not setting them. The MOQ does this well, but not entirely.
Mark:
If you can provide me with a better way of dealing with experience than the
MoQ and it's DQ-SQ tension then believe me Scott, I'm all for it!
Scott:
As I've said before, the intellectual level has been born, but it is still
in its infancy, and that is why it is a major problem to mystic realization.
Mark:
May i remind you: 'Furthermore, it is only through thinking that one can dig
out and overcome limiting beliefs, and thus grow.' Perhaps we could avoid the
limiting belief that the intellectual level was 'born'? Birth is a definitive
event, and that is too resolute an assertion for my liking when discussing
intellect. Plus, Pirsig does not say that the intellectual level was 'born' does
he?
Scott:
The task is not to try to escape thinking, as Pirsig's mystics seem to want
to do, but to focus on it, because it -- *because* of its S/O form -- is
DQ/SQ tension = Quality, for us at our current stage of evolution.
Mark:
Not thinking is the source of all static thought. If you wish to be creative
stop thinking. Not thinking is to move towards and encourage that point of
balance from which DQ intervenes and makes the new static value. You are placing
the cart before the horse again Scott i feel.
Scott:
Note the word "focus", and its use in def. #2 (from LC #111). When thinking
about
thinking, thinking is both subject and object, yet it is not meaningless for
it to be so. Because we are able to think about thinking, to at once create
and reunite the S/O divide we have Quality right in our little selves, and
that is why the S/O divide is value in the fourth level. It is a curse as
long as one believes that the divide is an absolute one, but the L of CI
prevents that, as does the MOQ. But the L of CI also prevents denying one
side of the divide or the other, which is the error I see in the MOQ.
- Scott
Mark:
The term S/O divide is meaningless in the MoQ, so to introduce it into a
discussion about the MoQ is placing the cart before the horse again.
Sorry if i have intruded Scott,
Mark
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