Hi Bo
On 25/12/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Peter and Posse!
We're coming after your hide, boy!
24 Dec. you wrote:
>
> > Steve also said I had my facts mixed up about how the MoQ emerged. Can
> > you point me to or can you forward me copies of the e-books please.
>
> First about forwarding. I live partly at my studio and partly with
> my wife and have a computer at both places. The said e-varieties
> of LILA and ZAMM I have in my studio machine and when I tried
> to send it to my other PC it refused, maybe some ... what's it
> called, but I will try again to you - promise.Regarding the
> emergence of the MOQ I'll gladly try a summary.
Your living arrangement sound most convenient! Don't worry about the
e-books; Marsha kindly forwarded copies within minutes of my posting the
request. Incidentally, she did it by sending directly to my email address,
circumventing moq_discuss which has a post size limit and doesn't seem to
allow attachments. Thanks for trying anyway.
You quoted Pirsig and commented some:
This Copernican inversion of the relationship of Quality to
> the objective world could sound mysterious if not carefully
> explained, but he didn't mean it to be mysterious.
>
> Now the "subject" is removed, only the objective world remains.
> No trickery, just follow the logic.
... or subjective mind has been replaced by Quality.
He simply meant that at the cutting edge of time, before
> an object can be distinguished, there must be a kind of
> NON-INTELLECTUAL awareness, which he called
> awareness of Quality. (my caps)
>
> He calls it "awareness of Quality", this sort of implies an
> awareness prior to Quality, but I believe he meant this to be
> Dynamic Quality.
This is a crucial part of Pirsig's work. We have talked about the route of
quality from the bottom to the top. People on other threads have talked
about how bums and drop-outs might experience the world more directly than
those enmeshed in modern living. Krishnamurti talked about seeing a tree
without naming it. Non-intellectual awareness of quality; it's quite a vague
idea. Certainly I remember noticing sometimes when my thinking was less
clear and my mind disturbed, only to realise later that subliminal pain in
my body was the cause of my distraction. Were you aware of how your back
contacts the chair you are sitting on before I wrote this sentence? The body
processes or values sense data constantly but can that be called awareness?
We can only call it awareness after a certain threshold in the valuation
process has been passed and the message is forced into the mind or,
alternatively, the mind deliberately reaches out with the senses. It becomes
intellectual when we name it. Cats can't name but they have awareness. Just
rambling!
You quote Pirsig again:
You can't be aware that you've seen a tree until after
> you've seen the tree, and between the instant of vision
> and instant of awareness there must be a time lag.
The Bates Method of sight improvement works on the premise that vision is
largely a mental process. Seeing is mainly a reaching out process; even if
our eyes are pointing in the right direction we don't see it until we focus
on it. On the other hand if something moves on the edge of our field of
vision our biological processes turn our attention, eyes, head and then body
towards it, eventually we identify it; finally if we want to communicate the
experience we then name it. I'm not sure where Pirsig's time lag begins and
ends in this process but where ever it is I think it is lost time and will
ever be unknowable to us. I think that the lost time is spent in the
organic/inorganic processing. Interestingly I don't see any social component
in all of this.
Now the clue. Dynamic Quality is "non-intellectual", then what
> follows (what also can be called Static) is "intellectual quality" and
> that is a subject aware of objects (a tree here). See the very first
> division is - as you said - SOM. And what's more, Phaedrus saw
> this divide as INTELLECTUAL! Not one pattern but what intellect
> is all about.
The Dynamic Quality is the unknowable lost time. That time is spent while
the DQ is evaluated by the inorganic/organic processes of the body. Agreed
that the S/O distinction takes place for purposes of communication in the
intellect. But if the cat can be aware without naming where does it's
awareness take place - you're going to say biological? If an S/O distinction
about seeing a church (for example) takes place intellectually is that idea
then relegated back down to the social level?
The first attempt at a new metaphysics - the Romantic/Classic
> one has Romantic=Preintellectual and Classic=Intellectual and
> the latter is the Subject/Object distinction.
>
> Here the metaphysical de-construction and and re-construction
> ends and ZAMM goes on to show how SOM came to be with the
> Greeks .
>
> Then LILA and the full-fledged MOQ and with it the new
> "intellect" that no longer was Phaedrus' S/O but Pirsig's
> mysterious and constantly more untenable INTELLIGENCE-like
> travesty. But so many scrambled to embrace it as as a new
> Newageish gospel. Why Pirsig did his fantastic idea this
> disservice is beyond me, but ... alas.
He's only human!
One thing I haven't processed fully yet is Pirsig's description of his
social and intellectual levels as consisting of ideas, eg the idea of the
president of the USA. That idea cannot exist without the biological
underpinning we call brain but nevertheless it does have a kind of
independence; you know Dawkins would call it a meme. The cat evaluates sense
data it recognises into objects biologically, it doesn't have ideas, social
or intellectual; so it's s/o split takes place in Pirsig's organic level? Do
you think the cat makes objective distinctions but not subjective
distinctions, does not consider itself but instead merely reacts to
objective events?
Please don't tear your hair out over these questions.
Regards
-Peter
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