[MD] grmbl

[skutvik at online.no]

Good ole Andre

31 May :

Bodvar before:
> > No, I'm not ready for any of your nonsense. The intellectual S/O level
> > cemented into SOM in the West, in the Far East it was transcended by the
> > Q-like Buddhism before reaching SOM proportions.

Andre cites Pirsig from the PT letter:

    'The argument that Oriental cultures would not be classified as 
    intellectual is avoided by pointing out that the Oriental cultures 
    developed an intellectual level independently of the Greeks  
    during the Upanishadic period of India at about 1000 to 600 
    B.C. (These dates may be off.) The argument that the MOQ is 
    not an intellectual formulation but some kind of other level isnot 
    clear to me. There is nothing in the MOQ that I know of that 
    leads to this conclusion.'  

> Read this carefully Bodvar (and a few others on this
> discuss):...Oriental cultures developed an intellectual level
> independently of the Greeks...(not SOM nor its S/O 'proportions')these
> were immediately discarded within their own particular analysis of
> immediate experience.

Don't worry, I read it long before you joined the the discussion and I 
know it by heart. But first (this not directed to you, but to an imaginary 
Pirsig)  who  has forwarded any argument that the Oriental cultures 
....etc. Not this guy at least, I fully buy his argument about the Vedic 
era corresponding to Q-social and the Upanishads to the intellectual 
and had you had the least knowledge of Indian/Oriental culture you 
would have known that the Upanishads was an intense bout of 
philosophy and because philosophy is about finding what's true and 
the what's false this WAS a start of the S/O distinction. However 
something induced them to quit this - that came to be the obsession of 
the West - to embrace the development that resembles the early MOQ 
with the  S/O the only static fall-out of the Dynamic Buddha nature (I'm 
not versed in their terminology) .  

The intellectual stage can be arrived at independently of the Greeks I 
have no objections to that - who knows what takes place at Alfa 
Centauri these days - but what is adamant is that all and any 
intellectual development must be based on the subject/object 
distinction in some or other form, it must to fulfill its role of subduing 
social values! A no-S/O intellect would be like proposing a non-living 
biological level.  

> You desparately need your version of this, and not Mr. Pirsig's to
> maintain your SOL argument, which is turning quite pathetic.

Where Pirsig undermines the MOQ I'm compelled to criticize him. No 
Pirsig cult this.

Bodvar:
> > In SOM science (physics at least) is the subject trying to find the laws
> > of objective reality. In the MOQ the "subject/object" distinction is the
> > intellectual LEVEL ... in case you didn't know. To deem something
> > subjective (even in quotation marks) tells a lot about your twisted
> > understanding of the MOQ.

Andre:
> All things dealing with science, its methods, its data, its properties
> (as so called within the MOQ) including those ascribed to objective
> (inorganic/organic) patterns are part of its intellectual PoV's and
> within the MOQ are therefore subjective. 

"Subjective"! Within the MOQ? This shows your level of 
understanding, but dear Andre you are innocent, it's Pirsig in LILAS 
CHILD " (anno 4. page 529)  "...they exist in the material world ... they 
exist in the mental world"  For the creator of a metaphysics that has as 
its purpose to transcend the mental/material distinction it's quite a 
mouthful. Had he said "In the MOQ all organisms are - what in the 
SOM is known as - objective ...etc." it would have passed, but no he 
wades in over his head.     

> Confusion is generated on this matter when it is forgotten that ALL
> scientific knowledge, including knowledge of objects, is subjective
> knowledge.This knowledge is confirmed by experience in such a way as to
> allow the scientist to generate a supremely high quality intellectual
> belief that external objects exist. But that belief itself is still
> subjective'. ( Annot. 100 in LC). 

For heaven's sake we know unto exhaustion that SOM creates 
paradoxes galore, for instance that scientific - objective - knowledge 
resides in the subject and a lot of similar dilemmas, but THIS is neither 
the place nor the method of showing how the MOQ makes them nil 
and void. It was after LC that I understood that the MOQ must to some 
extent be saved from the latter-day Pirsig. 


Bodvar:
> > To make science partly social  tells even more.

Andre:
> 'Just exactly how independent is science, in fact, from society?'The
> answer it [the MOQ]gives is. 'not at all'. A science in which social
> patterns are of no account is as unreal and absurd as a society in
> which biological patterns are of no account. It's an impossibility'.
> (LILA, CH. 24)

I know and agee profoundly with the upper-level-out-of-the-lower tenet, 
and that all levels reveals its parent if pursued deep and far enough. 
No trouble at all, but MOQ's point is that the MORAL code between the 
levels is absolute. A scientist may be caught red-handed in 
manipulating his experimental data to achieve academical 
advancement and funds and whatnot SOCIAL status, this is the ugly 
social roots that intellectual morality shies at all costs lest all 
intellectual pursuit are dead and gone. But the MORAL is unperturbed 
such a scientist's career is shot.     

> Who is twisted in whose understanding of the MOQ?

Poor devil, but again for the umpteenth time thanks for your interest, I 
admire your courage, you are the only "orthodox" left who forwards 
some kind of defense from MOQ reasoning. 


Bodvar