Jonathan B. Marder (marder@agri.huji.ac.il)
Sun, 28 Jun 1998 13:32:31 +0100
Hi Squad, Bo, and welcome back Diana,
Shortly before Diana's departure BO wrote:
>Hurry up and give us a response before Diana's time-out.
I fired off a prompt reply, but due to some mishap, it was distributed
devoid of content - how's that for ironic! (To clarify, by "devoid of
content", I mean with no textual content whatsoever :-)
At the same time, Bo received a full copy of the aforementioned post,
and has subsequently quoted from it. Thus, I'm not going to repost it
all, but here are some other parts I consider still worthwhile to post.
<snip>
BO
> ...but this one caught my attention. S-O context in other
>levels than the Intellect!?
I primarily referred to the observed/observer split. If you want to
reserve the S-O terminology for the intellectual level, that's fine by
me. However, my impression was that Pirsig 4-levels are each "observer"
systems with their own value patterns. MoQ tries to unify the nature of
observation at any level by characterising it as a Q-event.
The pattern values vary but the nature of evaluation (of Q) is
universal.
>...I thought the mind ghost had been properly buried by the SOTAQI
>procedure, but here it rises again.
I think that the mind-matter split is buried IN the SOTAQI idea. It is
part of it.
<snip>
At this point, I wrote my statement
> Pirsig's metaphysics tries to be universal. The rules guiding the
behaviour
>of molecules and the "moral" rules guiding humans are fundamentally the
>same, but operating at opposite ends of the scale of complexity.
On this, Bo and I seem to have found some common ground. Also when I
took issue with any attempts to claim that life somehow defies the laws
of thermodynamics. This discussion in included in Bo's posts.
However, for the sake of vanity, I would like to include a couple more
snippets, since they contain some of my best "one-liners".
Bo
>Finally. I think you see that your argument proliferates into
>absurdity as the other chlorophyll become observers of the excited
>one, which in turn...ad infinitum.
I stand by that "absurdity". Exactly where the observer stands depends
on . . . . .
. . . . where the observer stands. To get a good picture, you must use
the right equipment and a good angle. The "observation model" we use to
describe an event determines the picture we produce.
Bo
>No, Jonathan, I think the
>observer/observed phenomenon is confined to the Q-Intellectual level.
>Mystification of matter is a sure sign of SOM residue.
Mystification is not my aim or my approach here.
Mystics - any empirical picture is false.
Me - any empirical picture is TRUE (and there's an infinity of pictures
to choose from).
I hope that more or less fills in the missing part of the discussion.
Sorry about any confusion.
Jonathan
Jonathan B. Marder <MARDER@agri.huji.ac.il>
Department of Agricultural Botany, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Faculty of Agriculture, P.O.Box 12, Rehovot 76100, ISRAEL
Phone: +972 8 9481918 Fax: +972 8 9467763
Web page: http://www.agri.huji.ac.il/~marder
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