ROGER'S VERSION OF THE MYTHOS TO LOGOS
THE MYTHOS
On page 317 (Ch 28) of ZMM,Pirsig calls man's cultural medium "The Mythos".
He defines it as the whole train of collective consciousness of communicating
mankind. His analogy is that Quality is the track, DQ is the front edge of
the locomotive, and the static creations -- the mythos derived of man and his
relation with quality -- are the boxcars.
LANGUAGE AND DISTINCTION AND
THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MYTHOS
One of my current research areas is Humberto Maturana's theory of Autopoiesis
and how it does, and doesn't, fit in with the MOQ. I believe a brief
extension of the discussion to include some of Maturana's ideas can be
helpful at enlightening the discussion, or at least of laying bare my
critical assumptions.
In brief, Maturana's theory is that living beings bring forth themselves and
the world through attention, distinction and environmental coupling. Central
to his work is the theme that to study man and his world, you must study his
language. Language is unique to man, and it allows a whole new world of
attention, distinctions and couplings. In addition, the world that men bring
forth together in shared language is a shared world.
Maturana explains that language is much more difficult than communication.
Animals are frequent communicators, but they don't use language. Simply put,
your cat can meow to communicate its hunger, and your dog can bark at
intruders. This is how they successfully couple within their environment.
But they cannot make distinctions and objectify these communications. Cat's
don't say "Hey, I meowed three times today , wheres the darn milk?" And dogs
don't reference their barking when they aren't barking. Human language does
make distinctions of communications and of things. The "word" becomes a
shared distinction between the people of a culture. As an example, when we
type "sq" we all mean......
Long sidetrack, but the point is that language is the man's
distinction-making process. Language allows us to objectify reality and it
allows us to objectify ourselves as a consistent pattern of experience.
Maturana's theories of language, knowledge and the creation of a shared
"reality" mesh wonderfully with what Pirsig has written on the mythos and the
creation of static patterns of value. Like Pirsig's "analogues upon analogues
upon analogues" (p317), the world created by man in Autopoiesis is a
recursive, growing process. [What Maturana misses BTW is attention to the
role of direct experience or quality].
In summary, language, and the Greek mythos formed in great part through the
Greeks strong linguistic divisions, is the foundation for
subject/objectivism. It allows man to create shared, static distinctions and
concepts within the essentially unknowable flowing and dynamic quality that
surrounds and permeates the boxcars.
IDEALISM SIDETRACK
My second necessary exploration off the main track deals with the charges of
solipsism. I have repeatedly addressed that any solipsistic charges
misunderstand the MOQ completely. Experience /Quality is definitely the
creator of the subject and object, not some property of the subject.
However, whipping out my trusty "Companion To Metaphysics" by Kim and Sosa
and looking at the definition of idealism, I think that the MOQ does fall
under the soft form of idealism. To paraphrase my reference, idealism need
not deny reality. A metaphysics can be considered idealistic if it holds the
position that our conceptualization of reality is heavily influenced by the
mind or society (or of the mythos or shared language to use Mr P and
Maturana's terms). The MOQ blurs the borders between realism and idealism. To
rewrite a quote from my "Companion," that shows the (IMO necessary) interplay
between idealism and realism;
"The mind proposes, but reality disposes."
In MOQ language;
"Our relationship with Quality allows us to propose and dispose."
The quotes on ZMM p317, all Pirsig's ZMM talk of ghosts, his identification
with pragmatic Radical Empiricism (only concepts are static.... reality is
dynamic and flowing) make it clear that the world of distinctions and things
are conceptualizations derived from the "primal reality" of Quality, which is
inherently beyond knowledge. This is not solipsism, but it sure has
idealistic overtones! This reality we discuss involves our conceptualization
of reality.
I fear our editors may see this sidetrack as "off topic", but I only bring it
in because I think frank honesty on the topic is critical to our
understanding of the mythos and logos. We must not repeat Aristotle's mistake
of confusing the mythos with some fictional, fixed, objective reality. There
is more to reality than boxcars, and the content of the cars involves us and
our relation to Quality. Now back to the main line (finally).
THE LOGOS
My take on Mr P's view of The Logos;
1) It arises out of the mythos. The logos is a mythos that developed
distinct quality patterns all its own.
2) The logos is SOM. Mr P. states that it is the sum total of our rational
understanding of the world (P317). The logos is the name for the logical,
one truth, subject/object reality that has become part of our mythos over the
past 2000 years.
3) I believe (but am not sure) that the intellectual level is broader than
the logos or SOM. Quantum models, many-truth metaphysics, relativity theory,
fuzzy logic and the MOQ itself are all intellectual patterns. But they are
not within Aristotelian logos or SOM. The intellectual level is
overwhelmingly influenced by SOM, but it is not synonymous with it.
4) To Bo's point, the intellectual level, the logos, and mind are not
synonymous. Mr P and David B are always careful to point out that
intellectual patterns don't spring from the mind of a feral child, but from
the collective mythos of a society.
DIALECTIC, RHETORIC AND FAMOUS DEAD GREEKS
The issue of dialectic seems pivotal to our understanding of the battles that
bothered Phaedrus between the mythos and the logos and between the Sophists
and the Cosmologists. I am admittedly a bit fuzzy on the topic, and would
appreciate any feedback on any misunderstandings.
The Sophists:
These guys used rhetoric to teach excellence. They saw Good as reality
itself, everchanging, ultimately unknowable in any fixed, rigid way (p342),
and that man should strive for excellence in his relationship with quality.
The Sophists began to regard the mythos not as revealed truth, or Immortal
Principles, but as imaginitive creations of art (P336). Considering that
rhetoric is a form of artistic and intellectual quality, the Sophists can be
said to be using quality to pursue quality. Man is neither the full source,
nor some passive observer of the world, instead, the world emerges from the
relationship of man and his experience. Man is the measure. (Like Bo, I see
truth as a critical subsegment of Quality). Pirsig has modeled himself as a
modern day Sophist.
Plato:
Plato sought to synthesize the sophist concept of Good with the competing two
Cosmological schools of 'Change' and 'Changelessness.' Plato accomplished
this by his Immortal Principle of 'Forms', or 'Ideas' which are fixed and
changeless, and 'Appearance', which changes. Quality or Good was made
objective and changeless, and was demoted to the position of one of many
Forms. In Plato's view, the world of appearances is dependent on the
objective Forms. Plato stripped the intellectual dialectic process out of
rhetoric and explained that the logical search for objective truth was the
only way to arrive at the Forms. They were not created by man or by Quality,
they were discovered via the dialectic.
Aristotle:
Aristotle took Plato's Universal Forms and replaced them with the familiar
concepts of 'substance' and 'form.' Aristotle's objective reality was
discoverable via not just the dialectic, but by scientific inquiry and the
construction of logically consistent hierarchies. Note that objective
DISTINCTIONS were already an integral part of the mythos and language of
Greece. However, these objective distinctions were never before elevated so
forcefully and successfully to the status of Ultimate Reality. Aristotle
took his predecessor's Forms as the Ultimate and replaced them with objective
truth of the materialist world. Logos grew out of mythos.
The world of concepts and distinctions was no longer "proposed and
disposed" by excellence or man's relationship with Quality, but by the truth.
A single truth which best represented the true external, knowable,
distinguishable universe around us. Quality was then relegated to a footnote
on Aristotle's hierarchy of ethics and rhetoric was disparaged as a technique
to pander to emotions.
ARISTOTELIAN LOGOS BECOMES THE MYTHOS
Aristotle was the final nail in the Sophist's coffin. He threw out their
soft idealism that reality was the co creation of man and quality, and he
replaced it with the scientific method of objectively cataloging reality.
This method was later rediscovered and slowly reintroduced as a part of the
mythos of Europe and the world of Newton. As this logos grew in stature and
influence within the mythos, it turbo-charged man's ability to understand and
control nature.
The cost of the logos was that it forced us to give up our understanding of
Quality and value and how we interact with the universe. As the 20th Century
dawned, the scientific method that was built on this logos began to outgrow
it. Today scientists have realized that our models of reality are not the
same as the reality that they describe. Relativity, Quantum theory,
autopoiesis, chaos theory and others have all led scientists to realize that
they could create superior HIGHER QUALITY MODELS when they go beyond and
deviate from the fixed objective logos of Aristotle.
THE MOQ AS AN INTELLECTUAL PATTERN
We are now in the process of the creation of our new mythos. This is a more
accurate synthesis of Aristotle and the Sophists. Pirsig has suggested the
framework to one such model. He calls it the MOQ. This model does not deny
reality, but it points out that reality is Quality and that it is essentially
dynamic and undefineable. Our models and mythos are artistic creations, to
be used until a higher quality model comes along. And the test of that
model, the measure, shall be man's direct experience and relationship with
Quality.
Roger Parker
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
