dmb said: ...I've discovered that there are more than just a few anti-SOM thinkers within philosophy and within the academic community. Mysticism is much tougher to sell there but Bo isn't buying it either and it's pretty clear to me that this is the true source of his distortions. The failure to take that crucial element into the picture is exactly what has him thinking that the distinction between thought and DQ is the same as the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity.
Bo replied:...I say that the "DQ/Thought" dichotomy I haven't contemplated, it's the Summary's "Quality/MOQ" distinction I have questioned. because it's so uncannily resembles "Quality-as-objective/MOQ-as subjective". And DMB can't eel out of the corner he has painted the MOQ into that its basic divide is pre-concept/concept. not the Dynamic/Static one. dmb says:There are several misconceptions here. Pirsig says that the MOQ is to be distinguished from the Quality it talks about. This is not different from the distinction between DQ and thought. It's exactly the same idea, expressed in slightly different terms. Same goes for your other denial. The difference between pre-conceptual and conceptual IS the difference between DQ and static intellectual quality. The terms "Dynamic" and "static" don't appear until the second book, of course, but when he talked about Quality in his first book he was almost always talking about DQ. And in the second book he equates DQ with pre-conceptual experience and static intellectual patterns are, by contrast, concepts. In other words, Pirsig is saying that Quality differs from the MOQ precisely BECAUSE Quality is pre-conceptual (Dynamic) while the MOQ is conceptual (static). Or, to put it another way, Quality, DQ and pre-conceptual experience are three different terms for the same thing. Same goes for thought, concepts and the MOQ. These three terms all refer to static intellectual quality. To say that you've questioned the Quality/MOQ distinction but haven't contemplated the DQ/Thought dichotomy is like saying you've questioned cars but haven't contemplated automobiles when if fact they are exactly the same thing. One can only guess what you think these terms mean such that they don't mean the same thing. I mean, the MOQ is conceptual, is thought, is a set of static intellectual patterns. The Quality of ZAMM is the DQ of Lila and both terms refer to pre-conceptual experience. Thus, Pirsig's claim that the MOQ is different from the Quality it talks about IS the claim that intellectual descriptions are different from pre-conceptual experience they describe. Sorry for repeating this single point in so many different ways, but there is just one distinction at work here and I'm trying very hard to make sure this can be seen. Bo also said:...I guess it's SOM's tough tentacles that demands that intellect is our thinking facility that won't let go. Or the intellect=intelligence fallacy. Please give me your objections. dmb says:I never could make any sense of this notion. I don't see how or why it's a problem to believe in thinking or why such a thing is a problem we need to get rid of. What were James, Dewey and Pirsig doing when they formulated their attacks on SOM? Farting? Dreaming? No, these philosophical developments are the products of intellect, of thinking, of using their intelligence. And if they can use concepts and thoughts to discredit SOM, then how do you figure thinking is a fallacy of SOM? Doesn't Pirsig say its the other way around, that SOM is a flaw in the intellect and that the MOQ is an intellectual description that repairs that flaw? SOM sets up the mind-body problem, which is the problem of trying to figure out the connection between the two, and the MOQ solves that problem but that solution doesn't entail a denial of the existence of thought. And how would that even be possible? A philosopher that denies thought is about as absurd as a cook who denies food. I'm thinking right now and hopefully you are too. Bo said: Does not Pirsig's (in the PT letter) about the futility of any intellectual level before the Greeks (Greeks=SOM) and in LILA about the social level not having been transcended in Homer's time (meaning that what replaced Homer's time was SOM's time, ergo=intellect)? Does his "symbol manipulation" definition override that? dmb says:Hmmm. Your first sentence is a grammatically incorrect fragment and it seems to be missing a word but I'd guess you're asking if Pirsig's comments about the emergence of intellect in time contradict his definition of intellect. No, I don't think there is a problem there at all. I guess if take SOM and intellect to be exactly the same thing then it can get awfully confusing because then SOM is defined as "abstract symbol manipulation". But I think that's just one good reason why we shouldn't equate the two. I suppose you make this mistake because your SOL construes SOM as a form of logic. But actually it's an ontological claim. SOM is not the ability to use logic or to make distinctions but rather a claim about what's real, about the conditions that make experience possible. This claim is a product of intellectual analysis, not the capacity to formulate intellectual descriptions. That same capacity is used to formulate the MOQ and could be used to formulate any number of metaphysical systems of thought or make any number of conceptual distinctions. In other words, SOM is an intellectual description and it's one that dominated the Modern period so thoroughly that it was taken for granted and unquestioned but it is not intellect itself. To me, this is very obvious because intellect itself is what we use to question SOM. It's what we use to comprehend the alternative intellectual description that is Pirsig's MOQ. Bo said:I just wonder why DMB sees the SOL as "misleading" when it so obviously is the young Phaedrus' original idea. dmb says:As you can see from my attempts to clear things up, I think your SOL is misleading because it is predicated on a whole series of misconceptions and that the young Phaedrus never said anything even remotely related to these misconceptions. Bo said:SOM's tentacles are tough and if ITS internal "intellect", namely MIND makes it into the MOQ (that rejects the mind/matter distinction) it's done for and that's just what DMB - and shockingly enough Pirsig at times - fall victim to. Intellect isn't mind, but the mind/matter distinction. dmb says:I don't get you here at all. The MOQ doesn't reject the distinction between mind and matter nor does it deny them. It simply re-thinks these categories in such a way that it solves the problems that arise in SOM's formulation of them. As we all know, in the MOQ they're different levels of static quality with an evolutionary relationship. This construes the distinction differently than does SOM, but they're still distinguishable and they still have a place and a role in the alternative system. It really makes no sense to say that there is no mind in the MOQ or that the mind is one particular distinction, especially since the mind is what makes distinctions. Mind is the mind/matter distinction? WTF? How can a person even write a sentence like that? And if the intellect is the ability to skillfully manipulate abstract symbols then what reason is there is think it can only ever manipulate these concepts such that it's equated with just one particular distinction? Intellect can make a virtually infinite variety of distinctions. It can also reject any particular result of those manipulations and produce new ones, as the MOQ demonstrates, as James and Dewey demonstrated. Bo said:Dismiss? I agree with them all [James, Dewey and Pirsig] in their various insights of something ahead of our feeling of being subjects facing an objective world, but listen, isn't this pre-something MOQ's DQ ?????? And isn't the "subject facing objects" the static intellectual level of the MOQ?????? dmb says: Yes, Dynamic Quality is prior to all conceptual categories and intellectual descriptions. That's exactly why we call DQ the pre-intellectual experience and why we call it the primary empirical reality. The problem is when you equate this pre-conceptual experience with objects or construe it as subjective experience. Radical empiricism says that those categories are derived from Pure experience (DQ), from the immediate flux of life (DQ). It says the idea of subjects experiencing objective reality is exactly that; an idea. It's an assumption about reality, not reality itself. The MOQ says that "objective reality" is derived from experience and not vice versa. In other words, no, the static intellectual level is not "subjects facing objects". It is an intellectual description of experience itself. In SOM, there would be an objective reality even if there were no subjects there to experience it but in the MOQ objective reality is an idea and a flawed one at that. It would even be fair to say that the MOQ is derived from that same pre-intellectual experience. Both SOM and the MOQ are intellectual descriptions but they formulate things very differently, especially experience. In the MOQ experience comes first and the formulations follow from that. But according to SOM, the formulations are taken as reality itself and they're what makes experience possible. In the MOQ, experience comes first and intellect, that analytical knife, can carve it up in any number of ways, with subjects and objects being just one of them. "Now, it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance of intellect over society. It says that intellect is a higher level of evolution that society; therefore, it is a more moral level than society. ...But having said this, the MOQ goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals. ...Now that intellect was in command of society for the first time in history, was THIS the intellectual pattern it was going to run society with?" We hear very similar complaints in ZAMM too, of course. My point in quoting it is NOT to open a discussion about the relationship between social and intellectual pattens, but simply to show that subject-object science is to be distinguished from intellect itself. Is SOM the pattern intellect was going to use, he asks? This pattern has a defect in it and so we need and alternative intellect, one without this defect. He wants to replace one intellectual pattern with another so that intellect can lead society more properly. But your construction of things would make this task impossible because the MOQ is not an intellectual pattern. In your formulation intellect and SOM are the same thing and so there is no possibility of an alternative, no possibility to repair that defect in the intellect. And in this formulation being opposed to SOM means being opposed to intellect. This is a disaster and utterly ruins one of the central tasks of the MOQ. And finally, a little note for Mati. I noticed that you more or less equated the social level with mysticism. I think that would be a fairly substantial mistake. Myths are among the social level patterns and they contain a mystical message symbolically but the mystical reality itself is DQ and so it can't be equated with any kind of static pattern. That's the same reason why the MOQ (static intellect) is different from the Dynamic Quality it talks about. _________________________________________________________________ Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=TXT_MSGTX_WL_HM_express_032009#colortheme 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/
