dmb says: Thanks to some recent help from Ron, it seems pretty clear to me now that there are at least two different things going on here and they are conflated and confused in various ways. I'm talking about SOM and essentialism. These are not identical. SOM is a kind of essentialism, but there are other kinds, although the former is usually a subset of the latter. I say "usually" because the MOQ retains SOM in a non-essentialist way.
If logic has been "predicated on truth in being" since Aristotle, as he and Paul explain, then truth has been what corresponds to objects and these entities are thought to be what actually is, what actually exists. But this is approximately the opposite of what Plato says and he's the original essentialist. Aristotle's metaphysics of substance rejects and reversed Plato's theory of forms and yet they're both essentialists. I'd like to suggest that a similar thing happens here. The MOQ rejects SOM and essentialism. The latter is so important that it might be better to say the MOQ rejects som AS essentialism, AS an ontological ground. It can reject this essentialist element even while it accepts "subjects" and "objects" as useful concepts. That's how it has a place in the MOQ, Bo. Ron: Damn Dave, when it clicks.. it clicks!.. I've tried to explained this to Bo that SOL is remaking MoQ into another form of, and what you rightly point out as, what amounts to essentialism (in the traditional sense) and that ultimately its superfluous to the understanding of the rejection of essentialism In fact it confuses the issue. Dmb: I think Gav makes a good point but it doesn't quite address the question about "where we are when we are in SOM". I think scientific objectivity has produced an affliction we call alienation and the objectification of nature in particular is a freaking disaster but I suspect Bo's question goes in different direction. Alienation is a consequence of SOM but Bo is interested in the nature of the levels themselves, thus he rejects Gav's answer because there is no "alienation level". Instead of trying to answer Bo's question, I'd make a case the question only makes sense if the MOQ is a rival form of essentialism. This is probably the source of many such questions and the basis of the theory that SOM and intellect are the same thing. In other words, Bo takes the levels of the MOQ as an ontology, as what actually exists, rather than an intellectual description that categorizes experience. I mean, the MOQ says that experience IS reality, that reality is phenomenal and not ontological. Ron: Because Bo equates ontology with intellect, he sees MoQ as an evolutionary step intellectually. Which calls the whole level system into question and all the fuss about a 5th level and all sorts of explanations to accommodate it. dmb continues: if the MOQ's levels are taken as an essentialist claim, as an ontological claim, then it would raise the question of how SOM can exist within it. It would seem like a claim that one universe can fit inside another, like reality can have two different shapes at the same time. So basically, I think there are lots of problems when we try to reject SOM without also rejecting essentialism. dmb says: Its true that the MOQ reduces SOM to a set of static patterns, to a set of ideas ABOUT reality, the MOQ also says the same thing about itself. The MOQ is also a set of intellectual patterns. See, if the MOQ's levels are taken as an ontology then it has to replace SOM entirely. We have to get rid of it because it does not correspond to the actual nature of reality, which is a pluralism composed of DQ and the 4 levels rather than a dualism composed of subjects and objects. But this would be the mistake of trading one essentialism for another essentialism. On this view, the static levels are something like things-in-themselves, the new ontological ground that replaces the old ontological ground. Ron smiles at Dmb's clear observance: This is what has been holding the MD discuss back. Dmb: But as in the art gallery analogy, the MOQ says there is no ontological ground to which our intellectual descriptions must correspond. As Matt Kundert might put it, the phenomenal reality doesn't have any joints such that we have to carve it up this way or that to be "right". These intel lectual descriptions, metaphysical systems and the various worldviews can exist side by side. There are reasons to think some are better than others, but this does not depend on their proximity to how things "really" are. This is true of the MOQ as well. There are reasons to think it is better than SOM, but not because its truer in any absolute sense. In other words, it rejects essentialism even with respect to itself. When we take the MOQ otherwise, it produces a lot of fake problems as to the "real" nature of the levels. Ron: Ka-ching! dmb says: The fact that this assertion continues to be made in the face of such obvious and relevant counter-examples is extremely frustrating. Pirsig's non-SOM thinking and this thinking is supposedly familiar to us all. In this context, frankly, the assertion is pure nonsense. Asserting it is not only obviously wrong, its destructive. If SOM i s the problem and SOM is equal to intellect, then intellect is the problem. Yikes! That's the paralysis I speak of and it has done as much damage as anything else in terms of preventing a fruitful discussion. Ron: Again, right on the money. Dmb: I suspect this is the basis for the general disrespect for definitions and the basis of anti-intellectualism. Even if there were no other reasons to deny that intellect and SOM were identical, no obvious counter examples, these consequences would be enough reason to reject it. To reject essentialism and SOM is to reject a certain definition of reality but that is not at all the same as rejecting definitions per se. The MOQ is full of them. This would make a little more sense in the context of a discussion about mystical experience, but conventional concepts are perfectly appropriate in the everyday conventional world. And they're absolutely crucial wherever one wishes to discuss metaphysics. I think the assertion might be a bad interpretation of the idea we cannot escape from the mythos, that we can only think in terms of the concepts and thought categories handed down to us through language and culture. On this view, I suppose, all of that is SOM-based. But Pirsig points out that the MOQ is derived from that same mythos and insists that it couldn't be otherwise. It is derived from some deeply hidden, submerged roots of that culture but it comes from the same mythos all the same. This is another reason to deny that we're fated to think in terms of SOM, that SOM is a subset of the terms in which we can think. Finally, to equate intellect with SOM denies the possibility of reading and understanding the post you just read and, hopefully, understood. Thanks. Ron: Standing ovation from the cheap seats Dave. _________________________________________________________________ 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/
