Hi Craig, You said: > We have (a) subjects & objects in SOM, where they are the two > fundamental categories of existents & (b) subjective (social & > intellectual) & objective (inorganic & biological) static patterns > in the MOQ, where they comprise the fundamental categories only of > static existents.
Keep in mind also that the MOQ begins with the DQ/sq cut rather than the S/O first cut in SOM. > IMHO (a) has its usual meaning. The question for me is what is the > relation of (a) to (b) I'm not sure what you mean by its usual meaning, but let me try to answer anyway... To distinguish (a) and (b), first consider the relationship of subjects and objects in (a). Pirsig: "If the world consists only of patterns of mind and patterns of matter, what is the relationship between the two? ...There is the materialist school that says reality is all matter, which creates mind. There is the idealist school that says it is all mind, which creates matter. There is the positivist school which says this argument could go on forever; drop the subject. That would be nice if you could, but unfortunately it is one of the most tormenting problems of the physics to which positivism looks for guidance. The torment occurs not because of anything discovered in the laboratory. Data are data. It is the intellectual framework with which one deals with the data that is at fault. The fault is within subject-object metaphysics itself." Steve: (b) can still deal with S/O relationships with the static levels but can also explain how the levels relate to one another, while in (a) the two are separate universes. Pirsig: "A conventional subject-object metaphysics uses the same four static patterns as the Metaphysics of Quality, dividing them into two groups of two: inorganic-biological patterns called "matter," and social- intellectual patterns called "mind." But this division is the source of the problem. When a subject-object metaphysics regards matter and mind as eternally separate and eternally unalike, it creates a platypus bigger than the solar system. It has to make this fatal division because it gives top position in its structure to subjects and objects. Everything has got to be object or subject, substance or non-substance, because that's the primary division of the universe. Inorganic-biological patterns are composed of "substance," and are therefore "objective." Social-intellectual patterns are not composed of "substance" and are therefore called "subjective." Then, having made this arbitrary division based on "substance," conventional metaphysics then asks, "What is the relationship between mind and matter, between subject and object?" One answer is to fudge both mind and matter and the whole question that goes with them into another platypus called "man." "Man" has a body (and therefore is not himself a body) and he also has a mind (and therefore is not himself a mind). But if one asks what is this "man" (which is not a body and not a mind) one doesn't come up with anything. There isn't any "man" independent of the patterns. Man is the patterns. This fictitious "man" has many synonyms; "mankind," "people," "the public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our language is so organized around them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to get rid of them. There is really no need to. Like "substance" they can be used as long as it is remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and not some independent primary reality of their own. In a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality the four sets of static patterns are not isolated into separate compartments of mind and matter. Matter is just a name for certain inorganic value patterns. Biological patterns, social patterns, and intellectual patterns are supported by this pattern of matter but are independent of it. They have rules and laws of their own that are not derivable from the rules or laws of substance. This is not the customary way of thinking, but, when you stop to think about it you wonder how you ever got conned into thinking otherwise. What, after all, is the likelihood that an atom possesses within its own structure enough information to build the city of New York? Biological and social and intellectual patterns are not the possession of substance. The laws that create and destroy these patterns are not the laws of electrons and protons and other elementary particles. The forces that create and destroy these patterns are the forces of value. So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all schools are right on the mind-matter question. Mind is contained in static inorganic patterns. Matter is contained in static intellectual patterns. Both mind and matter are completely separate evolutionary levels of static patterns of value, and as such are capable of each containing the other without contradiction. The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links between these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two terms are missing: biology and society. Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of biology which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns as social patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by inorganic patterns. There is no direct scientific connection between mind and matter. As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are suspended in language." Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived." Sorry for the long quote, but RMP can explain it better than I can. I hope this answers your question. Regards, Steve 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/
