Bo,
> Good, I only want to add: Did any of the mentioned thinkers attack or > dismantle SOM? I mean Pirsig's first breakthrough was that of > identifying the mind/matter divide as something that had arrived at a > time in history. If there were thinkers galore who had done that before > him he would surely have referred to those. Maybe you were under the same impression as DT that Pirsig had been studying philosophy for a long time, got his BA in it and all. You as a village elder should know better, Bo. He admits himself that he was a terrible student of philosophy, skimming, looking for clues in a cursory fashion. The fact that he thought his was the only true attack upon what he termed SOM, was not an indictment of his thought - rather it was a confirmation that he was joining a cabal of our greatest minds in seeing this problem, from his own unique view, forging his own path up the mountain. Don't you see that as an important part of his teaching? Rather than just following the well-marked paths of traipsin' up the ole academic trail, well marked, safe, breathing the farts of the guy in front of you. Correct. The intellectual level is the S/O distinction (SOM minus the > "M") and moreover it is static, meaning it can't change. However, all > levels are/were static and transcending them just as unlikely - > remember the unlikeliness of life out of matter - yet, nevertheless it > happened. I do agree that the intellectual patterned level is the S/O distinction - or as Ron calls it, Objectivism itself. But Objectivism can be objectified, as can the objectification of objectivism and the list goes one, the mirrors proliferate and the level is unbounded in its upper reaches and thus can't actually be defined as static. That last statement is an unprovable assertion. It's also metaphysically untenable statement because it pre-supposes a beginning of time - a logical contradiction. Now, we are on thin ice, the MOQ is no static level, yet > there is some level-like relationship between SOM-as-intellect and the > MOQ and the thing to understand is that intelligence - that have served > the levels in succession - will serve the MOQ in the future, no need for > leaving thinking behind. > > Unless you really want to. Who am I to blow against the wind? But viewed as an ultimate and complete metaphysical doctrine, and not as a convenient half-truth, Realism (SOM), as we shall find hereafter, upon a closer examination, needs indeed no external opposition. It rends its own world to pieces even as it creates it. It contradicts its own conceptions in uttering them. It asserts the mutual dependence of knowing and of Being in the very act of declaring Being independent. In brief, realism never opens its mouth without expounding an antinomy. 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/
