From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Fri Jan 09 2004 - 20:23:15 GMT
Hi Bo,
Steve said:
>>... in my understanding of the MOQ,
>> it is itself an intellectual pattern. That is to say that for me,
>> intellect goes all the way down when we talk about the static
>> levels.
>
> Your opening statement of intellect "going all the way (one you share
> with all "subjectivists" around here) can't be correct if the MOQ is
> supposed to be something different from the SOM.
Steve says:
To be different from SOM, the MOQ need not be different in every possible
way.
PIRSIG (SODV): "The Metaphysics of Quality follows
the empirical tradition here in saying that the senses are the starting
point of reality..."
Do you think that the SODV Pirsig is part of the "subjectivist" camp? I
suspect you do.
The issue here is our different understandings of intellect. To me intellect
is simply thinking as I can't imagine how you can have a metaphysics before
thinking, while one can think before acknowledging a metaphysical position.
So for me, the MOQ is a part of intellect. You use a different definition
of intellect and come to different conclusions about the placement of the
MOQ in the static hierarchy. To me the fact that the MOQ doesn't fit in the
static hierarchy as you've defined the intellectual level should tell you
that you've made a mistake. According to Pirsig nothing is left out.
>> Any talk of patterns
>> relies on intellect to infer the pattern.
>
> Yes if this condition is observed. Talk of patterns relies on the MOQ and
> it is not an intellectual pattern, but the MOQ ...employs reason for its
> own purpose without being subordinate to it (see my last "intellectual
> level" post)
> Your above makes everything intellect and it assumes the same role as
> SOM's "mind".
I think Pirsig would agree that that intellect in the MOQ plays a similar
role to that of mind in SOM, but everything is not intellect. Any talk of
patterns is intellectual discourse, but some patterns that are discussed are
thought to exist independently of thought and are classified as inorganic,
biological, and social patterns.
>> But there
>> is another high quality intellectual pattern of value that says that
>> "gravity" is a description of experience that exists outside
>> thought--that if I weren't thinking about gravity, I'd still be
>> experiencing it.
>
> Regardless, both these "patterns" carry the S/O mark, in the first
> example the experience/the idea, and in the second the
> description/experience.
Steve says:
In the MOQ, an idea is an intellectual pattern of experience but experience
is not limited to ideas. The SOM experience/idea distinction you mention
translates into MOQ terms as intellectual description of social, biological,
and inorganic patterns.
Distinguishing thoughts from physical sensations does not require SOM, the
MOQ does just fine at making such distinctions.
>> Steve said: Within the broader context of the MOQ we can take out the old SOM
>> intellectual patterns and give them another look and see which ones
>> are still any good.
>Bo said: It's my opinion too, but the said rejection of the SOM is of utmost
> importance.
Steve:
What the MOQ rejects is the view of a 3-component reality based on material
substances, mental substances, and sensed data where sensed data is a
secondary by-product of the interaction between the first two components.
Instead the MOQ takes a more radically empirical stance than previous
empiricists who took either material or mental substance as a starting
point. The MOQ and says that mental and material substances are merely one
way of explaining experience and definitely not the best one for explaining
values. In Lila, Pirsig suggested the dynamic/static dichotomy as a better
choice for a "first cut."
>Pirsig says that the SOM will find a place inside the MOQ,
> but it's only the S/O left. He places it in the known manner across the
> static hierarchy (inorg+org=object ...etc) while you see some S/O
> patterns place within intellect ...but I see the S/O dichotomy as intellect
> ITSELF!
The metaphysical position that reality is composed of mental substances and
material substances in interaction (SOM) is certainly not a good definition
of intellect since intelligent thought is not limited to thinking in terms
of mental and material substances. As Pirsig responded to your SOL thesis
in LC, mathematics for example does not require the supposition of material
substances interacting with mental substances. How do you respond to
Pirsig's critique?
> The pick and chose of SOM patterns is not possible, ALL intellectual
> patterns are S/O at their core.
Steve says:
Only because you've defined intellect that way. The way Pirsig describes
intellect this is not so.
>For instance the phenomenon of apples
> falling to the ground. This got its S/O quality (of a force working upon
> matter) with the intellectual level. In a crude form with the strange
> physics of the old Greeks to Newton's system which is still valid, but
> notice that with Einstein the S/O-pattern is "shaken" ...General
> Relativity is a beginning of the end of an era.
>
> In the social era (the observation of apples falling was described to
> some apple spirit seeking mother earth ...I guess
During this social era, which I take to mean the era before intellect
reached a certain degree of freedom from social control, such an explanation
of experience was still an example of intellect. Spirits seeking mother
earth has been proven to be a bad intellectual pattern, but it is still an
intellectual pattern, a pattern of thought.
I still suggest that you stop trying to define the levels through thinking
about historical eras and instead use the types of patterns as defined by
Pirsig to understand history. I bet both would make more sense if you
could see the levels not as referring to types of people, places, or times
but rather to different types of patterns of experience. It's not that the
MOQ does not apply to understanding people and eras. It's a matter of where
you start. In Pirsig's MOQ, sensing Quality is the start of reality.
Regards,
Steve
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