Dear John (for us oldies a "dear john letter" was one of breaking an engagement (jilting) . Hope Marsha can point me to a site where I can hear that old "schlâger" and/or the text perhaps)
8 Feb.: Bo before:, > > 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. John: > 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. OK, Pirsig amateur quality can be used against him, but I'd say that it is his force, he was the uneducated child who had nothing to lose by pointing out SOM's "emperor's clothes". > He admits himself that he was a terrible student of philosophy, > skimming, looking for clues in a cursory fashion. I know. "Phaedrus was such a poor philosopher's .... etc" > 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. There's no lack of "attacks on SOM" in the sense of pointing to the paradoxical consequenses (platypis) of the Mind/Matter dualism (the modern, version of SOM) but is usually directed from one or the other end of M/M's "seesaw". The materialist end is down right now, but once titles like "the site of consciousness is found" or "... of soul" was hot stuff. (Danah Zohar f.ex.) The idealist end is up right now and ditto titles like "consciousness plays a role in the outcome of Quantum Experiments" or other "New Physics" are now the fashion. But both are within SOM's jurisdiction, none leads out of its territory. > 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. ;-) You really know how to say things, but still don't understand . Who are the anti-SOM trailblazers? See what happened to the MOQ when Pirsig embraced William James? It derailed and for years I have been working on bringing it back on track. James' "attack" in the form of a dynamic something creating subjects and objects by "conceptualizing" them is good old SOM in the guise of (our) consciousness creating the world and our academics - DMB and McWatt - embrace this as revelation and hopes it will open the academic doors. It may but is its MOQ's sure death. But as not to derail our own conversation, you may point to some philosophes who have truly hung the bell on the SOM "cat" in the sense of pointing to a new metaphysics arrangement in which SOM is a subset, because THAT must be done DMB pointed to Hegel and I am searching for a letter from Pirsig where he points to the likeness with Hegel but also to one aspect that spells total difference. I know that my hinting to Pirsig letters - but not finding them - sounds suspicious, but I swear. Bodvar 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/
