Greetings to you Ham
On 29 Oct. you wrote:
> Glad to see you back in the fray. Although we had some brief
> discussions concerning the significance of subjectivity a year ago,
> you took a hiatus from this forum before I had an opportunity to fully
> explore your concept that the intellectual level is SOM. I recently
> visited the MOQ archives to re-read your SOL essay.
I tried to stay away, but if one even begin to follow the discussion
by the archives there always pops up some interesting thread and
one is hooked. Very good if you have taken an interest in my
essay. But to as me to drop the levels is plain impossible, they
are what give it its explanatory power.
> As you probably know, I have a problem with the "levels" ontology, and
> the assignment of "intellect", "intelligence", "subject", and "mind"
> to different levels of Quality (value) makes no sense to me. If you
> can make allowances for this departure from "standard MoQ procedure",
> I'd like to pose this line of thinking on you and get your reaction,
It is difficult discussing the MOQ if its basics aren't agreed on and
the MOQ's basic "act" is to relegate all these Aristotelian
categories - among them "ontology" - to its own static intellectual
- level and after that to apply intellect to the MOQ is like applying
the ancient Greek Physics to Quantum Theory.
> Since ontology is the study of relational being, it deals with
> physical existence which, in my view, is always a subject/object (SOM)
> relationship.
Exactly! SOM or intellect is always a subject/object relationship.
> Therefore, for me, conscious sensibility (awareness) is
> the subjective "existent", and the intellect or mind is the cognizant
> faculty of the proprietary subject.
Well, here we go. This may look self-evident to you, but is
Aristotles echoing down through history and a bootstrap operation
is needed to lift oneself out of SOM and on to the MOQ where a
conscious subject (and its intellect) is NOT the starting point (self-
evident), rather (as said the) MOQ's own static intellectual level.
> That leaves the "objects" of awareness and the "value" they hold for us
> unaccounted for, except as they are defined by the laws of
> cause-and-effect and biological evolution.
Right, from SOM or Intellect seen the world becomes "objects of
awareness" - mind only - if you are an idealist. If you are a
materialist awareness is a mere by-product of biological brain
and nothing of the former makes sense.
> However we choose to describe objective phenomena, the relational world
> is pluralistic, and its primary characteristic is Difference. Thus,
> all knowledge, intelligence, logic, and conceptualization is
> differentiated awareness, and the proprietary self (which is the locus
> of awareness) is also differentiated from every other self.
This I take as the materialist choosing to describe the world
objectively yet, in his heart knowing that the idealist is right: the
world is "differentiated awareness" NB! As said a million time a
Metaphysics of Awareness is possible, but if its layout is similar to
the MOQ with differentiated awareness equal to the levels
nothing is gained.
> In your essay, you include a diagram showing both a "romantic" and a
> "classic" split of Quality, purportedly based on Pirsig's metaphysical
> construction, and you criticize the author for positing "intellect" as
> a separate kind of Quality. Here's what you wrote:
> > P. toyed with a Quality-based metaphysics to replace the
> > S/O-based one, something that resulted in a romantic/classic split
> > and as we see from this diagram "Classic Quality", subtitled
> > "intellectual", is the S/O aggregate. (ZMM page 243).
> > The Romantic/Classic split was left for the Dynamic/Static one in
> > LILA, but "intellectual quality" remains as a static level and ought
> > to be the VALUE of the S/O divide, but Pirsig had found a new way of
> > disposing of the S/O, namely the said "standard procedure" that says
> > that the two lower levels are "objective" and the two upper are
> > "subjective".
> What struck me when I first saw it in your post was the phrase: "the
> Value of the S/O divide." I don't see value as particularly
> intellectual, nor is intellect necessarily a value (in the Pirsigian
> sense),
You don't see value as intellectual, and that's right: Intellect is
supposed to be seen as value.
> However, I do believe that all value is relational, and the S/O divide
> is the foundation of relations. So why not say that VALUE itself is
> the subject-object relationship? Such an onology makes a lot of sense
> to me.
Here you are back at square one with SOM your starting point.
You want to be nice and call it "value", but it's just decoration, it's
old SOM underneath.
Quality was Pirsig's starting point - after that came the MOQ - but
the DQ/SQ combines Quality with its two aspects, thus the MOQ
becomes the new starting point (ontology) instead of being
something that belongs to the Aristotelian kind of metaphysics.
By this I mean that Aristotles instigated SOM and in it
metaphysics belongs to the subjective realm while the reality that
it's about belongs to the objective. By saying that Quality is reality
and the the MOQ a (mere) metaphysics he made the MOQ a
SOM sub-set.
I see the DQ/SQ dualism as the ontological starting point, no
Quality=DQ/SQ. Compare with SOM which isn't any
Reality=Subjective Reality/Objective/Reality, but mere S/O.
> First of all, Value represents the copula between subject and object;
> it binds them together, dynamically reversing the duality.
This is too contrived, as is Pirsigs "copula": (The two lower
levels=objective, the two upper=subjective) it doesn't work for
reasons it takes too long to explain. The 4th.level=S/O distinction
meets all demands of simplicity and what criterions there is.
> Secondly, if the subject is pre-intellectually aware of its object as
> the "value of otherness", and intellectually objectivizes the value
> into the appearance of finite objects, we have a workable ontology for
> the creation of a physical universe.
In ZAMM's "leading edge" Pirsig speaks about "PRE-
INTELLECTUAL awareness", however he definitely did not mean
a "subject" being aware. Only with the ensuing "INTELLECTUAL
awareness" did the subject occur as the entity who saw the object
(a tree). Hence the later insight that Quality was the creator of
subject and object and then the first proto-moq where Classic
Quality (of the Romantic/Classic dualism) was subtitled "Intellect"
and presented as the S/O divide.
> Finally, and probably most
> important to the MoQers, Pirsig can still call value Quality and define
> it as "the primary empirical reality" because, metaphysically speaking,
> Value is the essence of SO existence.
I'm already past all reasonable post lengths, but this is hilarious:
In fact Pirsig DID just that once by calling the SOM a "quality
metaphysics" splitting value the subject/object way. Something
that fits the intellectual level but it does not aspire to a
metaphysics. As SOM it's self-contradictory.
> Notice that I have managed to express agreement in large part with your
> SOL argument, and some agreement with Pirsig's ideology, without
> referring to levels and patterns. Would you oblige me, in turn, with
> your assessment of this ontology, hopefully without "leveling" your
> response?
I thank you for trying, but because you start with the very
premises that the MOQ is a revolt against it won't work.
Bo.
.
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