Dear Platt [Andre quoted] --
Seems to me if there's an "anguish" around here it's your continual
frustration with premises of the MOQ. If you want to stick with
SOM as the one right worldview, no one objects, least of all
Pirsig himself:
What frustrates me is the inability of sophisticated intellectuals to accept
experienced reality as a fundamental duality. Not that they don't
understand the principle (it's self-evident), but that they reject it
because a duality implies SOM, which their master has decreed as
"low-quality" static thinking. This is not a matter of a "right" or "wrong"
worldview, Platt. S/O reality is -- always has been -- the worldview of
human experience. To wish it away, or pretend that it's a tetrology of
levels, is akin to imagining a band of archangels circling our planet.
That's not intuitive insight or even intellectual reasoning; it's poetic
license.
"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.
A map with the North Pole at the center is confusing at first, but
it's every bit as correct as a Mercator map. In the Arctic it's the
only map to have. Both are simply intellectual patterns for
interpreting reality and one can only say that in some circumstances
rectangular coordinates provide a better, simpler interpretation." (Lila,
8)
While they may be adequate for local navigation purposes, all
two-dimensional maps are misrepresentations. By projecting the lines of
longitude and latitude as equal, Mercator maps show Greenland as large as
South America, for example. The most accurate maps for land masses are
split curvature projections that make the earth look like a peeled orange
skin. Only a 3-dimensional globe can represent the earth and its continents
in their proper relationships.
Anyway, Pirsig's analogy isn't really relevant because we're not talking
about a true-or-false premise. The amount of distortion on a map is a
relative issue. No one here (least of all me) insists that the Quality
concept is false or that subject-object experience is true. I do question
whether either of these perspectives can legitimately be called a
"metaphysics", but I don't deny their validity. My argument is that
one-dimensional man cannot experience absolute reality, but only its value.
But I venture to say that most of here believe that SOM
comes a cropper when trying to explain the worth of anything
including pennies, piggy banks and intellectual processes.
Because when you come right down to it, worth (value) isn't
just a sometime thing. It's the whole thing. No matter how
you try, you can't escape it. It's real before anything else is
real including, and most importantly, one's thoughts about
what is real. That's why I and others hold it to be a better
metaphysics than others we know.
I don't dispute the significance of Value, Platt. In fact, I'm all for it.
As you must know by now, Essentialism is a valuistic philosophy. But Pirsig
places his Quality (Value) outside the levels box where it can't be defined
or connected to the experienced world of "static patterns", except by doing
intellectual handstands. How does this four-level hierarchy make Value
immanent in our lives and help us realize it?
On 11/27 Andre came to much the same conclusion about the levels as I have.
[Andre]:
We ARE these processes and these patterns (Lila p158)!!
Maybe we need to completely rethink our intellectual processing.
They do include ALL levels. [emphasis mine]
Differentiated existence is the intellectualization of experience.
Experience is the realization of value by a being-aware. Being-aware is an
individuated dichotomy that is rooted to the metaphysical separation of
otherness from sensibility. Experiential reality isn't a handful of levels
and patterns. It's difference and contrariety in an infinite range of
possibilities which we only apprehend as objects and events in space and
time.
To paraphrase a beloved author, Some thoughts have more value than others.
Have a pleasant Thanksgiving weekend,
--Ham
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