Hi Steve
24 Nov. you wrote:
Bo had said:
> > I agree with Ian. With SOM the term "metaphysics" as the most basic
> > understanding of reality was born. In other words SOM began as the
> > attitude that we are able to understand the workings of reality.
> > This is the "cosmologist" (objectivity) but along with it
> > subjectivity immediately came into existence (the Sophists). And
> > ever since the S and the O has been involved in a see-saw play: .
Steve:
> Pirsig uses the word metaphysics from the pragmatist's perspective. He
> postulates that reality is Quality based on radical empiricism, but
> beyond that he does not claim to that he is describing how things
> actually are. That is an SOM game that he refuses to play
I see Reality=DQ/SQ as MOQ's basic axiom, unless one ends with a
Quality/MOQ (as words) split that (Craig's quote from LILA about
William James shows) is the S/O one.
Not describing how things really are, is impossible. Forwarding a
theory that opens by declaring "..this is NOT how things are" is
stillborn.
LILA:
"But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then
it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to
exist. Then one doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks
instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things
with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future
this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until
something better comes along. One can then examine
intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings in an
art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the "real"
painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of
value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence
and we can perceive some to have more quality than others,
but that we do so is, in part, the result of our history and
current patterns of values. Or, using another analogy, saying
that a Metaphysics of Quality is false and a subject-object
metaphysics is true is like saying that rectangular coordinates
are true and polar coordinates are false.
I guess it's SOM which is addressed above, but this isn't just the
objectivist (truth) camp, but the subjectivists as well and the latter does
not care so much about absolute truth. However what both camps
agree about is that reality is split the subject/object way. Regarding
many truths there's hardly a scientist that believes his theory is eternal
so even science is "provisional". Anyway, this is what the MOQ
resolves by making the SOM its own topmost level (reduced to the
value of the S/O) and says that the reason why it produces paradoxes
is its static limitation. The above from LILA isn't wrong but very
cumbersome.
Bo before:
> > Steve's "In the MOQ, a metaphysics is not an object or a subject"
> > brings "metaphysics" out of SOM-land, but then to say that "...it is
> > a collection of ideas" brings it back again and "..it is not
> > distinct from reality" retrieves it. It's like LILA that starts with
> > the correct Q view of metaphysics as reality itself "No one living
> > in an ordered universe is outside metaphysics", but then switches to
> > reality as the objective part and metaphysics (the MOQ included)
> > the subjective part .. and SOM rules the waves.
Steve:
> How is recognizing that Pirsig's work is a set of ideas a regression
> into SOM? What else is Pirsig's body of work supposed to be?
Ideas are supposed to be contents of (a) mind and in a metaphysics
that reject's the mind/matter divide the said content must be
something else, and IMO the correct transformation is making ideas
part of the intellectual level's "S" (of its S/O aggregate)
> Pirsig doesn't play "subjective/objective" in the ontological sense,
> ever. Drawing distinctions about experience and intellectual
> descriptions of experience is not subjective/objective.
Well as the James' quote shows he just does that, "reality/concepts" is
a S/O variety. MOQ's ontological split is the "dynamic/static" one and it
(the MOQ) postulates that its first static creation (inorganic) was pre-
conceptual .. Ipso facto.
> It is merely the recognition that such intellectual descriptions are a
> part but not the whole of experience. Ideas need to cohere with other
> ideas and with other experience. Saying so does not mean that any of
> that is subjective or objective. It is just experience with no subjects
> or objects presupposed.
Dearest Steve. I you now say that "intellect as language" was the
MOQ's birth-place, yes, it WAS because "intellect as language" is
SOM's "intellect", but MOQ's 4th. LEVEL is the last and highest static
value stage and can't be MOQ's home.
I'm not rying to play the Sophist, but at this high ground there are some
strange "inside out" turning of metaphysical socks.
Bo
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/
