Another great post Peter, I really savored it.
12 Dec you wrote:
> I find your daring reconsideration of Pirsig's secondary split (that of
> the static levels into Mind and Matter) intriguing and persuasive.
You mean the way Pirsig sees SOM "encased" by the MOQ (the
two lower levels=matter and the two upper=mind) this in contrast
to SOL's (the intellectual level itself=the S/O split)?
> I think that again terminology may be the issue. I said earlier on
> moq-discuss that I considered that our sense of ourselves, our
> experience of consciousness, was a mere projection, not a thing, and
> something like the mathematical zero. I begin to see now, with your
> help, that that point of view is mired in SOM. It's a blinkered view.
> It's relatively true but from a better point of view it's false. Now I
> begin to see some light at the end of my atheistic tunnel! I can now
> reason that God exists and yet he doesn't exist.
You certainly have had an epiphany and I fear tread too heavily
(re. God ;-), but I take you saying that the notion of a mental
realm where thoughts circulates independent of the corporeal
realm is SOM, and that this is a blinkered view, meaning so
cemented that it seems like reality itself. True, and even more
true (if possible?) is it that the MOQ is a break with this, but for
the break to be fundamental only the SOL way of
accommodating SOM will do
It's my conviction that young Phaedrus saw it that way and also
that Pirsig who wrote ZAMM were able to convey this view, but
Pirsig of LILA somehow lost heart and the said accommodation
of SOM (2 static levels objective and 2 subjective) kind of lets
SOM in through the back door.
A few years ago when Pirsig answered letters I wrote about the
indications in ZAMM of intellect=the S/O split and got the answer
that "matter is not part of mind" I.e. he sees the the inorganic
level as matter and the intellectual level as mind. If this still
makes sense I'm not sure, but is seems like after a long crusade
against SOM he still regards its mind/matter dualism as valid in
the MOQ.
> Pirsig's secondary division of static quality into Mind and Matter may
> have been just to enable us to get a handle on his ideas, after all
> Mind and Matter are really just poles of the underlying reality. The
> most base matter, the inorganic, is a swirling complexity of energy
> which has no solidity, and the mental, intellectual level is merely
> where that organised matter fizzes the most.
A "handle on this idea" ....hmmm. I too clung to this and made
excuses. I thought of Pirsig roaming the seas, hammering away
on his typewriter, not knowing if a single person would understand
the first thing and chose a less radical approach. I also thought
that when it proved that his message was understood he would
come forward, but this proved false. He really weren't Phaedrus
any longer.
You may also remember his explanation in "Lila's Child" about
how the said "accommodation of SOM" works (Annotation 4
p.529)
"In the MOQ, all organisms are objective. They exist in
the material world. All societies are subjective, they exist
in the mental world. Again, the distinction is very sharp.
For example, the president of the US is a social pattern.
No objective, scientific instrument can distinguish a
president from anyone else".
In the MOQ organisms are biological patterns of value, and there
definitely is no material/mental world. He possibly means "In a
SOM view the inorganic and organic levels are "objective" and
the social and intellectual levels "subjective", but the solution of
the SOM paradoxes (platypus) constructed from this are not
convincing. The SOL way meets the Occam Razor requirements
and what's more, parts of LILA indicates the SOL (the 4th.
level=the S/O split).
> Our experience of ourselves as an ongoing consciousness may be
> considered the real Mind and when structural changes take place in the
> body as a result of new food, breath or impressions, those changes
> undergo a progressive organisation until finally our sense of
> ourselves is altered and we may have a new idea; that new idea is an
> event of Quality.
I take this to be the "mind moving matter" conundrum in reverse,
that food, stuff, drugs, alcohol ...etc. alters (our) mood and that is
just as mysterious as the former ... from SOM seen that is, but as
said the in the previous post the intellectual level isn't MIND and
the biological level isn't MATTER so no mind/matter gap is
jumped. The said gap exists solely inside the 4th. level.
What this will mean for science in a possible MOQ-based future
I'm not sure of, but I don't agree with Pirsig about new value-
based versions of scientific discipline, for instance a Quality
Physics where A causes B is replaced by B values A . The 4th.
level is our normal abode and even if the MOQ changes the
premise the sciences will go on.
> Regarding finger moves: I read about Benjamin Libet in a popular
> science magazine a couple of years ago but the experiments I referred
> to predate that. The Libet experiment examined the presumption of
> volition in movement whereas the experiments I referred to seek to
> show that merely thinking about a part of the body will result in
> detectable changes in that part of the body. I can't give you a clear
> citation for those earlier experiments, I believe they were performed
> in the 1960's by R C Walis and others, however as a practitioner of
> Alexander Technique I can readily experience that a tonal change takes
> place in a persons body when they merely think of moving. The Libet
> experiments should be of interest to people involved with the Alexander
> Technique as one of the main parts of the technique is learning to
> inhibit habitual reactions, for example the bodies reaction to the
> intention of standing up out of a chair. Both of these experiments
> confirm the basic premise of the MoQ, that mind and body are one; in
> Alexander's words 'man is a psycho-physical organism'.
I would need to brush up my memory regarding these things, at
least it was Libet's findings I referred to. These were so
sensational that a Danish science writer made a whole book
about them. I tried to locate the book but ...!! At least it was much
weirder than "tonal change". I think it occurred half a second
BEFORE the intention. Related to this was another weird
discovery. A toe is a considerable distance from the brain and
nerve signals travels rather slowly, I believe it takes the said half
second from head to foot. Still if pricked with a pin on a toe it is
felt as taking place immediately and Libet found that the brain
antedates the signal as having occurred BEFORE it arrives to
correspond with the pinprick. This is just occult!
> I am following your talk with others in the 'knowledge as MoQ's
> intellect' thread about symbols; the foremost semiotician, Thomas
> Sebeok, said that 'the world is made entirely of signs' and that
> 'signification is the fundamental characteristic of life'. Whereas
> Pinker has shown that man's brains are primed through evolution with
> the capability of a universal language he called 'mentalese', Sebeok
> goes one further with his 'zoosemiotics' and posits a more universal
> underlying substrate: the 'semiotic function'. The world of the chimp,
> even that of the microbe, consists of signs. Signalling involves
> subject and object. It appears that only we humans can recognise, study
> and consider signification; perhaps this is the same as your SOL.
Hmm, do you know Charles Peirce's "Semiotic Metaphysics"?
Well, no more for now.
> Bo, I am beginning to accept your assertion that SOL is the main
> characteristic of what Pirsig called the intellectual level.
Good!
> I'm having more difficulty with your statements that the social level
> pertain only in the human realm. I'm sure you saw in the news recently
> about the Japanese experiments showing that chimps have a better visual
> memory than humans. I accept that human society is more complex than
> other animal societies but I think we will lose out if we limit our
> study of social values to human society only.
I'm not adamant on this point, to try another approach. According
to the MOQ the upper level started as a pattern of the former that
eventually "grew away from it original purpose", thus bee-hives
and ant-hills and other insect colonies are clearly "societies" in
biology's service. This goes for herds, packs ...etc. But when it
comes to primate tribes the borders start to blur, yet I see
emotions as the social hallmark, and apes are still a bit "out of
sight out of mind" while the true humankind (even before
language) with its great register of facial expressions can convey
a much wider range of emotions. f.ex. crying, that has an
enormous emotional-social impact.
Regarding visual memory I think some birds out-do chimps,
there's one that hides nuts and can remember hundreds of
hiding-places. All in all animals are more skillful in certain
respects than humankind.
Bo
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