Andre [Bovar mentioned] --
Gentlemen, I'm certainly not the one to explain Pirsig's meanings or define the MoQ. My reasons for hanging in here are 1) to absorb what I can about this philosophy, without the hierarchy of levels, and 2) hopefully to learn something that will make sense to an 'SOMist' like myself.
This 1/28 statement of yours reveals the anguish you folks are going through to reconcile an arbitrary four-level paradigm of reality with the reality we all experience (as observing subjects).
Bodvar argues ( I do not want to miss represent you) that there is something not quite right at the intellectual level (to put it mildly). Here I just want to throw in my bit so please bear with me. If the intellectual level is 'confined' to the 'skilled manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular experience and which behave according to rules of their own' (this points indeed to math, logic, computer programming etc) but my question is: 'What are we then intellectualising about? what the fuck (pardon me) is going on here? Are we intellectualising about intellectualising or are we intellectualising about learning to understand inorganic, organic and social PoV's?...and at the intellectual level trying to dominate/control these? Where is the connection?
I couldn't agree more that "there is something not right at the intellectual level", and I think you have identified the problem. The "connection", of course, is the cognizant subject (which Pirsig wants to eliminate). As the reasoning and conceptualizing power of man, "intellect" is not just "manipulating abstract symbols". It's integrating forms and properties perceived by the senses into meaningful constructs that make our experienced world a cogent system.
When you count the pennies in your piggy-bank, you're not just using mathematics and symbols, you're touching and handling real coins and arranging them in an orderly way. When you later "figure out" how many more pennies you'll need to purchase a greeting card, you're not just adding and subtracting numerical symbols, you're retrieving those images of the coins and imagining those extra coins you're hoping to find, earn or borrow. It's all "intellectualizing", folks! Whether you're dealing with tangible objects in "real time" or thinking about it "abstractly" at another time, all conscious activity falls under the process we call intellection.
Can we not then say that the intellect "dominates" conscious awareness? If so, why try to separate it as a level apart from social, organic, and inorganic reality? Being aware of reality involves all three of these "objective" categories, PLUS the conscious subject. Sure, a disc-shaped coin is a different form or objective pattern than, say, the water in a glass. But being-aware is a duality (dichotomy), not a tetrology. The content of our awareness is objective reality--whether it's inorganic, organic, or social. What's the point of eliminating the subject/object duality (which doesn't have to be explained) only to replace it with a more cumbersome and confusing four-level hierarchy?
It seems to me that what Mr. Pirsig is describing in his box of SQ levels is experiential existence. Outside this box MAY lie the ultimate metaphysical reality -- Potentiality, Essence, DQ, Nothingness? We don't know, because we don't experience it. That, I submit, is the unknown which philosophy should seek, not slicing up ordinary experience into levels of PoVs that don't make sense without a subject to intellectualize them.
(My thoughts, for what they are worth.) Best wishes, Ham 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/
