[Bo]
On the levels anthropomorphized:
> [Krimel]
> It is only difficult if you are locked into that mode of thinking
> about things. To the extent that I read you posts it seems to me that
> in is not just a manner of speak but a manner of speaking that
> reflects that actual way you see this. For you the levels have some
> kind of independent existence filled with desires, motives and
> purposes. This is a bad way of thinking and a bad way of talking.
[Bo]
Again, I don't see emotions or awareness in connection with the
levels, but its next to impossible to avoid such allusions. However I
do claim that emotions entered with the social level - as its
"expression" - but that's another discussion
[Krimel]
The connection is that you talk about the levels as though they were
entities. It is not at all difficult to avoid anthropomorphizing them unless
you understand them in such a way as to make it "next to impossible". Your
comments on emotions like your interpretations of history are just wrong. Do
you actually research any of this or is it just stuff that falls heavy
handed onto the keyboard of your computer.
Emotions are biological both in their origins and in the functions that they
serve. Our capacity for emotion is encoded in our biology. We share this
encoding not only with our own species but with other mammals as well. The
fact that people everywhere can rightly interpret the emotions of another
with whom they do not share common language or culture speaks loudly to this
point. We can even interpret the emotional states of other mammals with whom
we share almost nothing and certainly not a "social" connection.
We do overlay our expression of emotion with social customs that mediate the
proper time to display our emotions and we have a wide array of rituals for
expressing them but the emotions themselves are pure biology. In this
respect social custom plays the same role as it does in our purely
biological practices for raising our young and sharing food.
[Bo]
IMO, the levels are not secondary, the MOQ is the Dynamic/Static
dualism, without the static no dynamic. Yes, there has been much
discussion about the levels, but it stemmed from the impossible
4th level that (parts of) LILA suggested, once the S/O
interpretation is established the rest - meaning the social, the
inorg. and bio. is plain - is settled.
[Krimel]
This much of your position is crystal clear to me. You think the "levels"
are central. You think they offer great explanatory power. And it should be
clear to you that I think this is wrong. The levels are clearly not discrete
as Pirsig claims. I have yet to see even common themes as to what the
intellectual level is. Manipulation of symbols. A particular point of view.
The accumulation of knowledge and custom. Who know? Who cares?
What impressed me about ZMM when I read it way back in 1975 is that it
presented Taoism in the language of the west. You can see it here:
"You take your analytic knife, put the point directly on the term Quality
and just tap, not hard, gently, and the whole world splits, cleaves, right
in two...hip and square, classic and romantic, technological and
humanistic...and the split is clean." -ZMM
Pirsig is even here, expressing the fundamental insight of Taoism. I would
nit pick, even here, and say that the cleavage is never clean, never "right
in two. But Pirsig's claim that he is discovered something new is just
melodramatic megalomania.
To the extent that the MoQ restates the basic insights of Lao Tsu, it is a
powerful metaphysics. It is the metaphysics that Zen Buddhists ran to, to
unpin their philoso/theology. Of all the ancient world views handed down to
us from our ancient ancestors across the globe, it still rings as truth to
modern ears. It is the logical gem cutter best tool for resolving dualities.
Pirsig captures this in the quote above. In Lila he is merely picking a
particular duality that he regards as being more central and fundamental to
existence than S/O. It meshes neatly with the Taoism division of the world
into active and passive. It meshes neatly with the physicist's division of
the world into matter and energy. They are opposite sides of the same coin.
The very inability to define the Tao is validated in mathematics by Gödel
and in physics by Heisenberg. Uncertainty can not be driven from experience
even "in principle". I think this point is central to the MoQ and indeed to
the debate unfolding at present amongst Steve and Matt and dmb. It underlies
as well, the whole postmodern movement.
Pirsig's terminology winds up confusing this. In the end the MoQ has served
mainly as a platform for endless argument rather than a way to resolve
conflict. It has become a prism which can be twisted in the light to support
right wing politics and fuzzy headed new age thinking.
[Bo]
SOM is not only a "metaphysics of substance" but as much one of
"mind" thus the Kantian things-for-us are also abolished.
About time, space, causation no longer belonging to the human
mind, but removed to language/culture. It makes no difference, in
SOM both are subjective.
[Krimel]
I get it, that you and dmb seem to think this but where is Pirsig voice
agreement. Kant's TiTs even to Kant can not be directly known. They exist
only in so far as our sense data is "about" them. My hand does not exist
either as a TiT or as a thing separate from the rest of my body. My sense
impressions of my hand are both of a limb that is part of me (subject) and
as an independent thing that could be separated from me. But in neither case
does my sense data provide a "complete" picture of my hand as a TiT. There
are aspects of it that are not sensible to me or by me. The electrical
activity in the nerves, the heat generated by the flow of blood and the
biochemistry, the balance of hormones, the synthesis of proteins going on in
the hand of mind are outside of my direct sensory experience. There may in
fact be undiscovered properties of nature, activities in the 11th dimension
that directly relate to my hand as a TiT but which I can never in principle
experience directly.
But again where exactly does Pirsig say specifically that TiTs are
abolished? Saying that you think they are or that Dave thinks they are is a
far cry for having Pirsig say they are.
[Bo]
Back to ZAMM's on Kant, just one passage to highlight a point (my
caps)
Kant's metaphysics thrilled Phædrus at first, but later it
dragged and he didn't know exactly why. He thought about
it and decided that maybe it was the Oriental experience.
HE HAD THE FEELING OF ESCAPE FROM A PRISON
OF INTELLECT AND NOW THIS WAS JUST MORE OF
THE PRISON AGAIN.
[Krimel]
Is that supposed to be it? You think Kant can be refuted in a single
sentence? This is silly. It is even more bizarre than claiming that Kant is
wrong because he expresses himself in "ugly" language.
[Bo]
This is terribly important for the SOL interpretation. Phaedrus sees
Kant as a SOMist (albeit a subjectivist) and P. sees SOM as
INTELLECT and - finally - he sees the MOQ an escape from
intellect. Ergo the MOQ is no intellectual pattern, but the very
metaphysics that strips SOM of its 'M' and relegates it a place
under its owm 'M' (as its 4th. Level.
[Krimel]
Ok I will expand my question. Where in either book does Pirsig say that Kant
is an SOMist?
I think the points you make here are central to what you go on about all the
time. If you would read even your own writing you ought to be able to see
how messed up it is. The MoQ or any metaphysics is an intellectual pattern.
It is "meta" because it is a pattern about patterns. Pirsig is pretty clear
about this in his whole rant on why one should or should not bother to
construct a metaphysics at all. The very idea of "meta"physics is recursive
and paradoxical. It is an idea about ideas including ideas about ideas.
However, this shakes out and whatever one can make of the paradox, it
certainly is intellectual.
Beyond this I think you are dead wrong to claim that there is anything
necessary or fundamental in SOM. It is not "intellect". It is not even
required of intellect. It has long been noted that the east and west have
different approaches to this. In the West, "the squeaking wheel gets the
grease." In the East, "the nail that sticks out gets pounded down."
The philosopher Robert Solomon in a set of lectures on the nature of emotion
speaks of this East-West split in anthropological terms as the difference
between shame and guilt cultures. In the West when someone does something
wrong their infraction is a matter of individual guilt and individual
responsibility. In the East the infraction is a reflection on the group that
the individual identifies with and the emotion that attaches to the
infraction is shame. Shame, not as it applies to the individual, but how the
infraction reflects on the whole of which the individual is a part. This
Eastern interpretation does not appear to be SOM yet one would be hard
pressed to say that it is not intellect.
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