Hello DMB, > But I don't think SOM can be equated with the intellectual level > because there are so many examples of the intellectual dismantling of > SOM. William James and John Dewey both explicitly attacked it a hundred > years ago. Hegel went after it 200 years ago. Rejecting SOM is > practically the definition of postmodernism. How can that happen if > intellect is SOM? As I see it, the philosophers that have rejected SOM > count as a whole pile of counterexamples. If intellect and SOM were the > same thing, Pirsig would not be able to write books disputing it and we > would not be able to understand any such book. We'd be trapped with > nowhere else to go. There'd be no possibility of conceiving reality in > any other terms, but this is already a fact. Pirsig's books are > exhibits "A" and "B" in the case against it.
[Mary Replies] This is hard, and I probably won't do a very good job of explaining it, but let me put it like this. Anybody can attack SOM, and books have definitely been written; but, what are those books and what are those attacks? They are all expressed in terms of SOM. To attack SOM is for the subject (the attacker) to attack the object (SOM) which is perfectly valid as long as you realize that your still in SOM. To write Lila is for the subject (Pirsig) to create an object (a book) about the subject of SOM. Do you see what I mean here? I'll let Bo speak for himself, but I think this is what he has meant all along. I know it's what I mean when I say that the Intellectual Level is totally steeped in SOM and cannot transcend it. I am incapable of thinking of anything - of forming any thought about anything - that is not me (the subject) thinking about something (the object). That's why it's impossible to discuss DQ; why Pirsig said (somewhere in Lila) that it was impossible to define Dynamic Quality because to formulate a metaphysics was a corruption of the metaphysics you are forming. I'll find the quote if needed. I think somebody posted it recently, in fact. I think it's what he means when he says the Intellectual Level is "thinking itself". Basically, I think the only way to transcend SOM is to enter some higher plain which I have never personally been to. Perhaps something akin to what Marsha talks about when discussing her moments of "pure experience". Mary 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/
