From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Fri Sep 26 2003 - 08:54:49 BST
To All MOQ Discuss.
There have been many who have questioned my SOLAQI idea up
through the years and now that Pirsig has spoken against it in "Lila's
Child" it looks impossible to maintain, but as I understand the MOQ it
points to that interpretation of intellect and even if no one puts Pirsig
higher than myself we are here to discuss his ideas critically. Still, I
understand that people are "sick and tired" and would like nothing
more than retire it (and myself) if only we could arrive at some
understanding that reconciles all positions. It's OK to love the MOQ -
for a month or so - but I want it to be able to face the world, and the
intellectual level is its Achilles heel. In this message I propose a
solution that IMO makes all opinions equally right - or wrong - but first
a sketch of the quandary.
Not very long after this discussion started I made the observation that
the emergence of SOM in "Zen and the Art ..." (ZMM) matches so
perfectly with the emergence of the intellectual level in LILA that it
couldn't be a mere coincidence. If so, intellect's "nature" has nothing
to do with mind or thinking (as such) but is the value of discerning
between what's subjective and what's objective. This idea has gone
through many stages and acronyms, but has landed on the
"subject/object logic as quality's intellect" (SOLAQI).
To understand why it is so controversial (except for Pirsig's rejection)
is a more difficult task (maybe a critic should have written this part)
but the intellectual level has come to mean a leap into a mind realm -
awareness/consciousness - and removing this "spiritual" quality from
the MOQ sounds like a sacrilege to many. Maybe it also sounds like a
revision of the whole MOQ, but it only concerns the intellectual level. I
am of course biased, but except for Pirsig's words in LC and the
above said points I am not able to find more reason for why it meets
with such resistance. Such as Squonks' "there are no subjects and
objects in the MOQ" misses its point completely.
I can't deny that it looks like a case of monomania, but the argument
that breaks its logic has yet to be presented. At first there were even a
few who agreed with me Donny Palmgren, Denis Poisson and Platt
Holden comes to mind, but the two former have left and Platt dropped
his support after LC's arrival (no wonder). But Scott Roberts seems to
have come to a similar conclusion and several people - if not all -
agree that the S/O (or SOM) constitutes a major part of intellect, what
it is part of, however?So no doubt, the MOQ would benefit greatly if
the "nature" of its intellectual level became more clear.
Well enough preliminaries and over to my sketch of a solution. This
may not be so sensational or new, for instance it resembles Sam
Norton's "Eudaimonic" theory and maybe it is what Scott has touched
upon and other participants whose suggestions I may have
overlooked. Anyway, the reasoning goes like this: There are many
great thinkers who have postulated some kind of upheaval around
Homer's time (whenever that was?). I know Julian Jaynes' bicameral
theory, but believe that Wilber, Barfield, Campbell, Steiner and many
other see a profound shift around these times. Jaynes' idea is that the
two halves of the brain connected so that the modern self-conscious-
ness emerged (someone warned about Jaynes as a materialist, but
that does not matter here). What humans before had perceived as
voices from the gods (in their heads) became "thoughts" (in their
minds). In a MOQ context this can be seen like this: Language that
had been society's means of controlling the biological individual
became intellect's way of controlling the social individual. Out of this
stepped the the autonomous individual with a mind of its own.
That Pirsig and the MOQ joins this group may not be my own idea at
all. Answering a letter from me in (1993) where I wondered if Jaynes'
idea could have some bearing on the emergence of the intellectual
level in the MOQ.
PIRSIG replied:
“I haven’t read Julian Jaynes’ book but what I heard of it seems to
match the Metaphysics of Quality exactly.”
I had also asked:
"The ancients were guided by inner voices that was perceived as
messages from their gods. Can it be that those people were more in
touch with DQ than we are? That DQ interfered with the social level
directly through the individuals, but as the intellectual level became
more developed it took over as an agent for forming human
behaviour."
PIRSIG replied: (my capitals)
"I don't know if they were more in touch with DQ, but certainly they
were less in touch with modern intellectual patterns that declare those
voices to be illegal. IT IS THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD TO
CALL A THOUGHT A VOICE. I think this is what the ancients did and
this is in fact done in the last chapter of Lila."
Look, Pirsig first says that Jaynes' idea matches the MOQ EXACTLY!
And then that there is no difference between language and
THINKING. This I believe ought to satisfy all parties. The intellectual
level means THINKING, but it also means that the S/O split was the
necessary outcome from the (false yet compelling) impression that
thinking takes place on another level of reality than verbal language.
Those who see the SOM as a later development are also right: The
S/O Metaphysics did not spring directly out of the new faculty. It first
manifested as a doubt in the the old social (mythological) order, later it
took the form of a quest for the eternal principles, only with Socrates
and Plato did things come to a head ...and the rest is history.
I hope my presentation is intelligible and that all who have an opinion
about this issue will respond.
Sincerely Bo
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