Ron keeps quoting LILA, for what purpose I don't always know, but it's
worth analyzing.
"Actually the issue before him was not whether there should be
a metaphysics of Quality or not. There already is a
metaphysics of quality. A subject-object metaphysics is in fact
a metaphysics in which the first division of Quality - the first
slice of undividede experience - is into subjects and objects.
Seen in the light of the MOQ this (about SOM a "moq") makes sense.
The intellectual level WAS a subject/object metphysics while SOM, but
there can't be two basic understandings (metaphysics) and SOM has
lost its metaphysical "credentials" to the MOQ and is now a sub-set of
it..
Once you have made that slice, all of human experience is
supposed to fit into one of these two boxes. The trouble is, it
doesn't. What he had seen is that there is a metaphysical box
that sits above these twowere boxes, Quality itself. And once
he'd seen this he also saw a huge number of ways in which
Quality can be divided. Subjects and objects are just one of the
ways. The question was, which way was best? Different
metaphysical ways of dividing up reality have, over the
centuries, tended to fan out into a structure that resembles a
book on chess openings. If you say that the world is 'one,' then
somebody can ask, 'Then why does it look like more than
one?' And if you answer that it is due to faulty perception, he
can ask, 'How do you know which perception is faulty and
which is real?' Then you have to answer that, and so on. Trying
to create a perfect metaphysics is like trying to create a perfect
chess strategy, one that will win every time. You can't do it. It's
out of the range of human capability. No matter what position
you take on a metaphysical question someone will always start
masking questions that will lead to more positions that lead to
more questions in this endless intellectual chess game.
Only that the MOQ isn't an intellectual pattern, but has intellect as its
4th. level (as above) and this makes for a world of difference, from the
earlier Aristotelian kind of "metaphysics" which truly were intellectual
games, i.e. subjective theories about an alleged objective reality.
The game is supposed to stop when it is agreed that a
particular line of reasoning is illogical. This is supposed to be
similar to a checkmate. But conflicting positions go on for
centuries without any such checkmate being agreed upon.
Phaedrus had spent an enormous amount of time following
what turned out to be lousy openings. A particularly large
amount of this time had been spent trying to lay down a first
line of division between the classic and romantic aspects of the
universe he'd emphasized in his first book. In that book his
purpose had been to show how Quality could unite the two. But
the fact that Quality was the best way of uniting the two was no
guarantee that the reverse was true - that the classic-romantic
split was the best way of dividing Quality.
The Romantic/Classic divide wasn't that bad, one easily sees the
Dynamic/Static "behind" it, but OK, DQ/SQ is best.
"But although the four systems are exhaustive they are not
exclusive. They all operate at the same time and in ways that
are almost independent of each other. This classification of
patterns is not very original,
The terms - inorganic, biological, ...etc. - aren't original, but that these
are "static patterns of value" is highly original.
but the Metaphysics of Quality allows an assertion about them
that is unusual. It says they are not continuous. They are
discreet. They have very little to do with one another. Although
each higher level is built on a lower one it is not an extension
of that lower level. Quite the contrary. The higher level can
often be seen to be in opposition to the lower level, dominating
it, controlling it where possible for its own purposes. This
observation is impossible in a substance-dominated
metaphysics where everything has to be an extension of
matter. But now atoms and molecules are just one of four
levels of static patterns of quality and there is no intellectual
requirement that any level dominate the other three." -Lila
chpter12
Pirsig makes it sound as if SOM's "substance" corresponds to MOQ's
inorganic level and from that it follows that SOM's "mind" corresponds
to MOQ's intellectual level and this fallacy has haunted the MOQ since
day one and prevents a true understanding of it. Nothing connects the
MOQ with SOM .... except the latter being the former's 4th. level.
". There is the materialist school that says reality is all matter,
which creates mind. There is the idealist school that says it is
all mind, which creates matter. There is the positivist school
which says this argument could go on forever; drop the
subject. That would be nice if you could, but unfortunately it is
one of the most tormenting problems of the physics to which
positivism looks for guidance. The torment occurs not because
of anything discovered in the laboratory. Data are data. It is the
intellectual framework with which one deals with the data that
is at fault. The fault is within subject-object metaphysics itself.
Whops, here he says it - again - intellect is the S/O splitter, there was
no neutral (non-S/O) intellect before becoming infected by SOM, the
two are identical. Attention Arlo!
End of part one
Bodvar
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