Bo asked: I guess James' "aesthetic continuum" is another name for this pre-intellectual awareness that's neither subjective nor objective. But what does the dividing?
dmb says: The answer is pretty well contained in the question. If pre-intellectual awareness is undivided experience and intellectual awareness is divided then, obviously, intellect is what does the dividing. And here intellect can't be equated with the subjective self anymore than an axe can be equated with the wood it splits. The subjective self is one of the divisions, not the divider. The MOQ simply says there are other ways to conceptually divide things other than along subject-object lines. As DM says, your question "re-introduces the idea of a subject ..and all the problems of that dualism." If Dewey, James and Pirsig are all rejecting SOM but still manage to provide an intellectual alternative then it should also be obvious for that reason also that subjectivity and intellect can't rightly be equated. In that case, intellect still divides. Its just that one particular division is being rejected in favor of something else and they provide many explantions for that rejection. Of course they explain the advantages of this alternitive way of cutting things up. Of all the comparisons made by reviewers (to Hegel, Aristotle and others) Pirsig himself saw that James really did seem to be on the same page, rejecting SOM and using the same terms in offering an alternative. This is all laid out toward the end of Lila, in chapter 29 of Lila, after the MOQ itself is presented. The point here being simply that experience, awareness or consciousness doesn't have to be explained in terms of a subjective self having awareness of an objective reality. In other words, the point is simply that intellect isn't necessarily the same thing as a subjective self. And so I think one would have to miss this point entirely in order to assert anything like your SOLAQI. (Subject-Object Logic As Quality Intellect) _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook – together at last. Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
