Bo: Fascinating issue this. You seem to understand the "intellect > while it was SOM" point so now you will know that when I say > SOM it's intellect before it became the 4th level. But an even > subtler point is that SOM did not suppress "subjective static > quality patterns" it created "subjective as its necessary contrast > (light/darkness) thus "subjective" is SOM through and through.
DM: Yes and no. I am suggesting that SOM is the evolving story of a distinction, one that sets out the subjective and objective and takes it to the max, but in the end the dominant secular culture in fact ends up suppressing the subjective side from knowledge enquiry although maintaining it and devaluing it as something personal and individual (personal taste, choice, fulfilment). Bo:> At the time when SOM's emerged it was TRUTH rising above a > sea of superstition (the 'superstition' term is surely younger than > the Greeks but you see the point) and the Socrates vs Sophist > issue (in a MOQ retrospect) wasn't the 4th. vs the 3rd. level (the > real social patterns, the myths, were a thing of the past at that > time) but an all-internal 4th. level conflict: The "man the > measure" is clearly the first "subjective" assertion. DM: Was it not a new truth, a new form of truth.No longer gods truth (in a sense the ultimate objective truth) but yes man's truth, although reason is given divine attributes by many -i.e. as if beyond mere human perspective- and truth from experience rather than tradition. > dm>> ....it ends up with only the objective and becomes materialistic ...(snip) > > As said many times "what would become" SOM went through > many stages first Plato (where "ideas" was the true,objective part > and "appearance" the subjective, via Aristotle where "substance" > is real and "form" the elusive part. After Aristotle the first > primitive physics appeared. In ZAMM Pirsig says that with Ari. we > see the first glimpse of the scientific attitude. > > The point is that although SOM created the subjective/objective > schism - and that this is the foundation of science - the subjective > part is just as much SOM and it went through as many stages as > its twin. A somist can be immaterialist and maintain that mind > creates matter yet SOM is his premises. DM: Yes agreed. > >> .. and unable to make any sense of value/values except as >> epi-phenomenon. DM: Yes again. You really would like Charles Taylor. > > Again no, the idealist has as much trouble understanding the > MOQ as the materialist - even more so. Mystics are the most > idealistic idealists ...no? DM: We need to seethe difference between subjective and absolute idealists here. > > Of the two kinds of hostility to metaphysics he considered > the mystics' hostility the more formidable. Mystics will tell > you that once you've opened the door to metaphysics you > can say good bye to any genuine understanding of reality. > Thought is not a path to reality. It sets obstacles in that > path because when you try to use thought to approach > something that is prior to thought your thinking does not > carry you toward that something. > > Another thing is that P himself went and undermined the MOQ by > turning idealist himself, but that's another story. > DM: I think Pirsig can see that of the two extremes of SOM, the idealist one is more rich, dynamic and human, but the same errors are in idealism and need to be recognised. This is Heidegger starting point, i.e. his understanding of Hegel in the light of Nietzsche. >> When Pirsig suggests we replace SOM with MOQ this is to solve the >> problems of SOM he has discussed, > > Right, but his method of how the MOQ "encases" the SOM is > faulty and how the paradoxes (platypi) of SOM thereby are > resolved is a "lead balloon". DM: Don't agree, can you be spcecific? > >> some of these problems like the mind/matter distinction seems just as >> problematic to me if you drop the metaphysics. For me a 4th level that >> only contain the S/O distinction retains some of the problems of SOM. > > Don't you get it? The intellectual level - in its SOM phase - > CREATED the paradoxes because SOM means the S/O split is > existence's deepest ground. When the MOQ took over the "M" > "ceptre" the former S/O were rejected as existence's ground, the > DQ/SQ split became REALITY? In its new and humble role the > S/O distinction is a mere static value and the paradoxes its > former false role created, goes poof. DM: Not sure why you think what I say disagrees with this. > >> What about the dynamic/static distincition, perfectly intellectual and >> perfectly not captured via the S/O distinction? > > Now it's my turn not understanding. "Perfectly intellectual"? Is > that based on the conviction that metaphysics is a mental > construe and thereby "intellectual"? If so you look on the MOQ > from SOM's premises and probably will continue do so. DM: Intellectual for me means to reflective consider your langauge and distinctions, i.e. how you describe experience. Tradition and religions describe experience unreflectively and are therefore mythic and not intellectual -at least to start with. SOM comes along and describes reality-experience in a more reflective way and creates what we call intellectual. But for me MOQ and other non-dualistic approaches give us new forms of the intellectual that CONTINUE to be intellectual but OVERCOME dualism and SOM. Again there have been many anti-dualists, James, Dewey, Bhaskar, Heidegger to name a few. 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/
