Hi Andre --
The quintessential basis of the MoQ is Quality which Pirsig equates
with Reality. This Reality can only be experienced pre-intellectually.
It cannot be known. It is the moment at which no subjects or objects
are experienced...only Quality/Reality/One. ...
Even the statement 'Quality is the continuing stimulus which our
environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live.
All of it. Every last bit of it' is probably too much already for a large
majority of 'Western' ears. The huge problem is that 'we' 'Westerners'
want to intellectualise about everything. This is the process of changing
DQ into SQ!
Firstly we want to make sense of it, then understand it and then create
meaning out of it (these are 3 different levels of 'absorbing' the
experience, if you like). This, of necessity, involves the use of
language.
Our 'intellect' must use a representational system called language which
goes through a process of discrimination on the 'handful of sand, the
world of which we are conscious.(ZMM p75). Pirsig calls this process:
'the knife' but the problem I would suggest is that, not only is the
'process' a 'knife' but also, the very use of our language is a knife.
To wit: our language cannot 'contain' / 'represent' Reality.
Thus we have 2 difficulties: 1: the process...our reasoning/discriminating
what is of value and what is not (S/O logic to create 'meaning'
subservient to 'truth' (SOM) and 2 our language...'we are suspended
in language'.
How to create a 'path' through which 'East' can meet 'West' and 'West'
can meet 'East'?
Our traditional notion of 'intellect', by which I mean that 'part'
supported by our brains (a huge, dynamic bundle of 'emergent property' )
is where this discrimination process is taking place and this is S/O
'driven':
reason and rationality...truth-seeking, the groundwork laid down logically
by Aristotle, defines this process leading to SOM...a world of subjects
and objects, cause-and-effect relationships etc. ... It is a manipulation
of
data leading to a conceptualisation of reality.
What I like about your summary (the SOM part) is that it expresses the
dualism of classical philosophy without resorting to levels or redefining
"intellect" as one of them. What it is missing, of course, is the value of
this S-O connection. This "the genius of Pirsig" may have realized but
was unwilling to apply within the SOM framework.
But now comes Pirsig!
With the introduction of Quality he up-ends the whole SOM framework
including intellect!. Not truth but Quality i.e.the Good, is Reality and
'truth' is subordinate to Good.'Intellect' ( I still have difficulty with
this
word) and prefer to call it Intellectual level (i.e.intellectual patterns
of
value and I still have difficulties with the word 'level'...anyway...)
Pirsig has, not only injected objects and subjects with a dynamic reality,
he has done the same with the intellectual level. By introducing the
Quality concept, All has become PATTERNS ...nothing fixed...but
interweaving, interplaying, interfering etc etc.Stable, to be sure, but
all responsive to Reality. He has, linguistically, redefined (SOM) platypi
and through this process forced us to alter our 'reasoning' and the
concomitant arrival at 'meaning' at making sense of reality and
our 'part'/experience in it.
I don't know what "injected objects and subjects with a dynamic reality"
means, but your description "nothing fixed...but interweaving, interplaying,
interfering" certainly suggests a dynamic process, whether the system as a
whole is "stable" or not. Existence (the world according to SOM) is
differentiation and change in process. It is a DYNAMIC world: its creation
is dynamic; evolution is dynamic; birth and death are dynamic; human history
is dynamic; the entire universe is a dynamic system. And whatever exists
must be CREATED by some source that transcends finitude and process --
including that which is "responsive to Reality".
As Pirsig says (ZMMp 381): 'The One (of which the MoQ is a
representation) can only be described allegorically, through the
use of analogy, of figures of imagination and speech'.
One cannot escape language. Intellect only understands language
but as said, Pirsig has provided us with a frame within which to
expand its capabilities.
The genius of Pirsig was to realise this and introduce its liberating
component: Dynamic force (which drives evolution).
It is that part that says that all is provisional. We have our own
analogues as individual, cultural/social and intellectual SQ but this
is not Reality.
DQ/SQ..the mystic force that is the mother of ten thousand things.
And because our Western intellects 'desire' we can see its manifestations
and when we remain (or return to become) 'desireless' we can see
the mystery (Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching).
This is what I believe Pirsig has tried to convey by this MoQ Code of Art.
I like it here/there.
Likening Pirsig's allegory to a Code of Art (as opposed to a metaphysics) is
intriguing, albeit not quite fulfilling the "code" of Philosophy. I agree
with your basic premise, Andre -- i.e., that the MoQ is a neat paradigm for
finite existence which alludes to (if not presupposing) a still-unresolved
"mystery". I think that is a fair appraisal of Pirsig's effort.
However, I believe the mystery is intuitively resolvable, if one has the
will to resolve it. The solution isn't to be found by playing with levels
and patterns of existence, labeling some things "dynamic" and other things
"static", or any other analytical description. Rather, it comes from
acknowledging that all process is "provisional" in that it has an immutable
source.
When we distinguish the relational (SO) perspective of a finite subject to
its objects from the absolute source of both, we realize that Difference not
only defines existence but separates the subject from its uncreated Essence.
It is this separation from which Value is born and comes into being through
the experience of a sensible agent. Value is what draws us to the Source.
It is the basis for our survival "instinct", our compassion, our joys,
fears, and sorrows, our morality, and our quest for truth. The cognizant
Self is spawned from Difference: the difference between sensibility and
otherness. And what holds this dichotomy in perpetuum is the Value of
Essence.
(For what it is worth.)
Essentially yours,
Ham
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