Hi Matt
On 11 Nov. you wrote:
> Matt:
> Let me reiterate: I do think something important happened in Greece
> around the time of Socrates, but it is only by a stretch that I
> would think "intellect" would be an appropriate title for it.
You obviously use "intellect" in the usual SOM sense as the
subject (self) surveying the world. ZAMM claims that the S/O split
happened during the said times. What confuses many may be
that objectivity came first as truth, only later did the necessary
counter-point - the "subject" - arrive and IMO Pirsig made an
error by making the Sophists representatives of Quality, they
were "intellectuals" representing its subjectivism, "Man the
measure" ..etc.
> Again: it was Greek democracy, not Greek philosophy (or Greek
> science, which at the time was called philosophy, or Greek math,
> which at the time was done by philosophers).
OK, much of what we attribute to the Greeks is hindsight, they did
not speak about subject or object, but for now I'm happy with
your "something important happened". ZAMM called it SOM and
LILA should have called it the 4th. level, but Pirsig lapsed back to
SOM where "intellect"= the subject, self, or thinking.
> I've discussed with you before my problems with your suggestion, but
> probably the shortest summation of why I've never sought to pick up
> your revision of Pirsig's philosophy is this: I think you make the
> same mistake on a systematic scale what some others make on a
> rhetorical scale--you conflate SOM with thinking.
You couldn't be more wrong regarding my position. It's SOM
which conflate intellect with thinking. As said SOM emerged as
the notion of truth (objectivity) The subject was not part of the
Greek repertoire (the Sophists were soon forgotten) but as
objectivity grew the implicit subjectivity grew too and emerged as
the thinking self (Descartes) which is called "intellect". From the
MOQ seen neither the 'S' nor the 'O' is intellectual value except
the very distinction ... or the aggregate.
> In Pirsig's language, you conflate the Subject/Object dualism with the
> analytic knife.
No conflation, S/O analysis is intellect's knife, the social "knife"
distinguishes between own and other causes. The biological
"knife" distinguishes between own body and foreign matter.
Shortly: What's GOOD/BAD at that level.
> As far as I can tell, in Pirsig--and this is the
> better part of wisdom--there is a difference between SOM and our
> ability to distinguish, to make distinctions, etc. At the very root of
> the Quality thesis, waiting there implicitly, lies our ability to
> distinguish between X and Y, using the analytic knife, because if we
> didn't first have that power, then we wouldn't be able to value one
> more than the other.
DQ different from SQ is clear - that includes intellect's S/O* too,
but I'm not sure what your general "distinguish" means. Social
distinguishing is not S/O, but still involves a lot of distinction-
making and decision-taking, so does the biological and inorganic
levels. That DQ is behind-under all static levels is also plain.
*) the S/O distinction is intellect's value. SOM is intellect before
the MOQ. This transformation is what I have so much trouble
conveying and used the black profiles/white vase example.
> In fact, Pirsig's very important point is that the analytic knife, our
> distinguishing ability, is the same thing as our process of valuing,
> that each movement of the analytic knife is a function of our
> evaluative relationship with the two that fall out of the cloven one.
To say that our S/O distinguishing ability is the same as our
process of valuing is correct, it's (our) intellectual valuing
process, but - as said - the social level is not S/O, nor is biology
and inorganic. Here is where you miss the point, intellect's S/O
analysis is one among many static analyses inside the greater
DQ/SQ analysis.
> Rorty once defended Derrida from his interpreters on this very same
> point by pointing out that there is a difference between Derrida's
> logocentrism and binary oppositions generally. Distinctions aren't
> bad _inherently_. A distinction is only as bad as the use to which
> it is put. One of the things philosophers have been doing since
> Plato, to borrow the way Putnam once put the point, is turning ad
> hoc distinctions into universal dualisms. They did so because they
> thought eternity was better than ephemerality. They did so because
> they thought eternity was a live option.
Useful information.
> But it isn't, and neither is the analytic knife or binary
> oppositions inherently bad. It is thinking so that makes me
> suspicious of people because it reminds me of another philosophical
> quest, the Route Back to Eden. This quest takes it that Man is a
> Fallen Being and that one of its traits of fallenness is that it
> must distinguish, cleaving into two, four, eight, sixteen, and on,
> instead of being able to coalesce with the One. A variation: if it
> weren't for language/concepts, we'd be able to get at what the
> essence of the object was.
The Fall Myth (in a MOQ context) was social value lamenting the
loss of (biological) innocence. When the intellectual level arrived
it saw its own "fall", namely the loss of social "devotion" (why
Pirsig regarded Aretê as Quality itself). Owen Barfield (Scott
Roberts) sees an identical fall (with the Greeks) that he called
"loss of Participation". Barfield prophesies a future route back to
Eden ("return of participation) while the MOQ actually is such a
route.
> That is why, Bo, I do not get on board with thinking that SOM is the
> intellectual level. It either makes your enemy 1) all-pervasive
> (thus making you an irrevocably fallen being) or 2) domesticated
> (thus taking the enemy away).
Because my understanding of intellectual value is the S/O
distinction - not the subject, self, thinking or mind - these
alternatives don't really apply.
> In the first case, it is an ironically SOMic venture to conflate SOM
> with thinking and in the second case, you just force yourself to look
> for another name for what Plato did that was bad that we need to get
> rid of.
No need to regard the Greek achievement as bad, seen as the
4th. static level it's the highest and best, just not reality's ground -
as it was in SOM.
Bo
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/
