> [Andre] > Mr. Pirsig did NOT regard 'intellect = the S/O distinction' in ZMM! > > [Platt] > The hell he didn't. Check out his discussion of the two horns of the > subject-object dilemma presented by English department intellectuals > at Bozeman. > > [Arlo] > Andre is correct (as usual). You are mistaking the dominant > intellectual pattern of Western culture, which Pirsig WAS combatting, > with the entirety of the intellectual level. Pirsig has said outright > he does NOT consider "intellect=SOM". You can disagree him, for sure, > and you can support Bo's MOQ over Pirsig's MOQ, but you can not say > Pirsig regards "intellect=S/O distinction" when it is clear he did > not, nor does not.
Yah, and this goes to Bo misinterpreting my little narrative, "Excavating SOM," as a confirmation of everything he's been saying. Bo is so weird, that when I told him that he wasn't attentive enough to what my explicit claims in the paper were, instead of saying, "Oops, I was wrong--your narrative coincides with mine up until X point," he contorts himself to say that I was on his side when I wrote the paper, but that upon learning that he agrees with it and that I had unknowingly confirmed his theories, that I backpeddled and disavowed the paper. The first and back half of the contortion being plainly false. Utterly bizarre when you consider that the paper was originally written out in a series of posts in dialogue with Bo in MD, as _specifically_ written to explain how SOM in ZMM was a "dominant intellectual pattern of Western culture" and not the birth of the intellectual level (an inference suggested when you put the end point of ZMM together with his comment that it was birthed in Ancient Greece). I wrote that paper specifically to argue in nuanced form why I believed that Pirsig never believed that SOM was to be identified with the intellectual level. The paper's here for people who think that SOM=intellectual level: http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/05/excavating-som.html I don't consider it definitive, but it's as good a place as any to start a considered discussion about this disagreement (which is often a confusing melange of exegetical and philosophical disagreements--Arlo's point a week ago, I believe). I haven't read it in quite a while, and have no idea what I would toss or affirm, but perhaps bouncing off it can provide a stable point of entry for somebody. For people that want Bo's reading of that paper, go to Feb 3 of 2010, "Excavating SOM. Part One." For people that want the actual genesis of the reading of ZMM I provided, which was accomplished in _direct_ contradistinction to Bo's interpretation (I forgot how direct till I looked), go to June 29 of 2005, "Clearing up Bo's intellectual mess, part I". That subject line was not my choice (Mike Hamilton's on June 22), but that new thread--which was massive--was itself an extention of a conversation that started at the least with "Bolstering Bo's SOL," all of which was an extensive month or longer effort to give Bo's ideas a run for their money. Many interesting conversations burst out of these threads, some of the most interesting I've ever had personally at the MD, with people like Mike, Scott Roberts, Sam Norton, Erin Noonan, and Paul Turner (and many others). It was a very productive period for the MD. In particular, the "generalized propositional truths" thread (July 13) came out of there. It began like this: Paul said: As I've said before [to Bo], with no reply, I think generalised propositional truths are the "organising principle" of intellect and skilled abstract symbol manipulation (allowing ever more general constructions) is its mechanism. Sam said: Would you be willing to unpick that sentence (or point me to where you've unpicked it elsewhere) so that I can get clear on exactly what you're claiming? I'm particularly interested in the 'mechanics' of how what you're describing works. That is, how do 'generalised propositional truths' organise anything? and, if symbol manipulation is a mechanism, who or what is 'doing' the manipulation? (That last might be rephrased: what is it that is responding to Quality on the part of the symbols? Can the response be described, in an analagous way to describing the aggregated responses of DNA molecules as 'natural selection'?) Matt: Those were great days for conversation--not all of the days, but my nostalgia does want me to suggest better days. I think it might have something to do with just how tired the people who were around then are _now_, five years later, still slugging. It wasn't even slugging back then for some of us. I'm not even sure what Sam thought about the issue he raised for Paul, but he raised it not because he disagreed, but because he considered Paul part of an inquiry and was asking a critical question that would help Paul, and everyone else, understand what he meant. Sam did this all the time. Those are the questions, I guess, that I don't see as much anymore (though my sense is likely stilted because I don't read nearly every posting). People are much more likely to respond with "you are obviously talking about this...," then having the shared assumption that we are all deploying and making up as we go along specialized philosophical vocabularies, and that progress is helping everyone develop their set of tools, so that when the tool is honed, you can see just how it works and whether or not you really _do_ want it or to reject it (both people get that view). It seems much more likely these days that we nip new things in the bud before they ever have a chance to grow, and there's not a sense that it is partly _our_ responsibility as an audience to help that flower grow. In case people are wondering, that's the feel of being in an academic environment. People who rip on the academy as ideological orthodoxies that demand you conform and stifle creativity--you've never been in a real academic environment. I've never been so supported for my divergent views in my life. Some are bad--Richard McKeon really did have an earned reputation for creating carbon-copies, as did Leo Strauss at the same place and time. But the _environment_ as a whole did not just include the two of them--every University Department worth it's salt tries as hard as possible to have at least one professor for every subfield, to be as diverse as possible. If they didn't, they'd die, because eventually if the academic winds changed, they'd cease to attract students. Alright, enough nostalgia. My point is not that Bo should have dropped his ideas. Far from it. God knows my basic position hasn't changed--that I'm conscious of--in 7 years. But what frustrates those of us who have been around since 2005 (and likely those who haven't) is that Bo doesn't appear to evolve in his conversation with others. Rather than changing the shape of his underlying, unmoved position according to conversational demands--which have changed greatly in 10 years, as most of everyone else has changed--it looks like he just copies and pastes the same critical remarks that people rejected the first time around. What he needs to do is evolve to take into account the rejection, make a new defense to the new attacker. But Bo is like a fish, who every time he blinks, he's looking at a new world with the same defenses and weapons he woke up with, completely forgetting the experience he'd gained the day before. I'm not knocking repeating yourself, because when someone comes _at_ you with the same argument, what can you do but reply the same way as you did last time if the other guy didn't respond cogently the last spin of the wheel. And I'm not knocking copying and pasting per se: who hasn't noticed that I do that a lot lately. But the reason I do it is because I'm genuinely wanting for somebody to offer critical comments on them. There's the evolving conversation of the MD, but the reason one writes essays (of whatever length) is because you have an idea, or tool, or argument, or whatever you want to call it, that isn't just based in the ephemeral now, but something you think has utility for a lot of situations. So I bring out that tool so people can press back and show me how to evolve it. Bo...he's more like the day's talking point. And it's Groundhog's Day. I didn't start out meaning to trash on Bo, one more time. But whenever I talk about Bo, or other people like this, I really mean it not for Bo, but as a parable for others. Matt _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the too busy. 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