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
Bo: 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. Ron: I suppose the Tao te ching is a "still born" theory also. This is the exact crux that you seem unwilling to accept Which is the axiom of the MoQ..............Quality is indefineable in universal terms. 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. Bo; I guess it's SOM which is addressed above, Ron: Guess again Bo, he speaks about taking one explaination as THE explaination. He warns against it. He says thats what SOM does and what you are doing also. Bo: 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. Ron: Why do you contradict yourself so frequently? objectivism claims that we may only concern ourselves with observable phenomena, subjectivism states that those observations are of a subjective nature and "objectivity" for the most part is of a subjective interpretation. Both deny the validity of the other. Bo: However what both camps agree about is that reality is split the subject/object way. Ron: Not in so many words, they both deny the validity of the other. They hardly agree. It is the philosopher who posits the dichotomy. Bo: 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? Bo: 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) Ron: Per MoQ, as Steve was speaking, ideas are of the intellectual static level. He was not speaking of "mind" seperate from "matter", a clever ploy you use to diffuse an arguement. > Pirsig doesn't play "subjective/objective" in the ontological sense, > ever. Drawing distinctions about experience and intellectual > descriptions of experience is not subjective/objective. Bo: 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. Ron: If you read carefully, Steve speaks of the expereince of reality in contrast with thoughts about those expereinces making it a subjective/subjective split in conventional SOM terms. Only when an expereince is universally verified is it considered an "objective truth". > 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. Ron: The turning of the sock you mention is the shifting from the particular to the universal. The whole arguement is that you insist that Quality may be universally defined when Pirsig and the rest of us say that Quality is of a particular expereince and may not be argued to the universal. 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/ 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/
