[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[Krimel]

[Bo]
>From  your "the MOQ a mess" premises it's almost a badge of honor 
to be characterized as ludicrous. See, rejecting the MOQ (meaning 
accepting SOM) is required to find the SOL ludicrous, and THAT is 
exactly my point. Thank you mr "anymouse".

[Krimel]
The mess is obvious from that fact that this discussion continues. Your
response leaves open the question why. I would think the only point of
agreement we might have is that Pirsig is the one who created much of the
mess. But SOM and MoQ are certainly not the only options on the table. 

[Krimel]
Excellent point and one that has been made to Bo many many times. But just
to belabor it; since Bo seems to thrive on repetition and Mary and Marsha
seem to miss it altogether: Pirsig claims that the MoQ arises out of the
static dynamic spilt and that this split supersedes the subject object
split. But Pirsig is not the first to make this spilt by any means. Lao Tsu
around 500 B.C. talked the Tao from which Pirsig derived his notion of
Quality and in Lao Tsu Tao is seen as the source and resolution of all such
binary divisions. The static dynamic split was made by Taoists in the Han
dynasty around 200 B.C. In their additions to the I-Ching they called the
active or dynamic force Yang and the passive static force Yin. The fact the
Pirsig or at least his anointed do not understand this is an ongoing source
of irritation to me. But that is off the subject of Bo's BS.

The early Greeks around 500 B.C. dealt with the same issues in a slightly
different way. The school represented by Parmenides thought the world was
ultimately divisible into atoms (SQ) and the void (DQ). Heraclitus also
around 500 B.C. thought the world was entirely continuous and indivisible
(DQ). In any case these concepts pre-date or are entirely independent of the
Greeks. This particular controversy among the Greeks has been at least as
long lasting and contentious among western philosophers as the much rehashed
mind matter split. This controversy culminated in Zeno's paradoxes in which
he argued that motion was impossible and the world was entirely static. This
argument was so difficult to dismiss and yet so clearly wrong that it took
more that 2,000 years to straighten out. William James gave a good account
of the problem, without mentioning Zeno, in one of his last books "Some
Problems of Philosophy". There he argued that reality or at least our
perception of it is continuous but that our concepts about it are discrete. 

Furthermore SO as Mary talks about it did not originate with the Greeks. It
originates in biology. Even single celled organisms that form together in
colonies can detect and are guided by the distinction between self and
other. Plants can draw this distinction and it is critical to immune
function and almost all animals. It is not a metaphysical concept and it
certainly did not originate with the Greeks.

Bo in his frequent laughable forays into historical analysis throws Pirsig
into a blender with Julian Jaynes to come up with some imagined fundamental
difference in thinking said to have arisen with the Greek at some fixed
point in time. I am not at all clear on if this is supposed to be the Greeks
of Thales time around 750 B.C.; the previously mentioned Greeks of 500 B.C.
or the Athenian Greeks of 300 B.C.. But what difference should 400 or 500
years make to the clueless? Bo concedes some form of intellect to the Vedas
which are among the oldest extant writing known to us. But he denies any
such thinking to the ancient Hebrews yet Ecclesiastes is among the most
profound writings ever penned and the most recent date one could place on it
would be prior to Alexander or around 300 B.C. Intellect is surely evidenced
in the Book of Job where Job seeks a reason for his trials and tribulations
and receives reasoned answers from his friends. The final form of that book
dates to about 400 B.C. and portions date to before the building of the
First Temple around 750 B.C.

Personally, I would argue that intellect and the intellectual level have
been a part of human existence since at least Cro Magnon times. The cave
painting in France are stunningly artistic and in Mary's transcript, Pirsig
claims art is among the highest expressions of Quality. Evidence for the
ceremonial burial of the dead certainly suggest thought processes, shared
traditions and a thoughtful analysis of the human condition among our
earliest ancestors as do to the stone tool kits of Neanderthals. The claim
that myths and stories of ancient people are somehow excluded from the
intellectual level also strikes me as entirely wrongheaded. The oral
traditions of every people on this planet are clearly attempts to understand
and explain man's relationship to the environment and to give reason and
purpose to the lives of the individual who told and listened to them.
Discounting them as "social" or non-intellectual is simply a disingenuous
way of discarding facts that don't match ones preconceptions. It is that
willful ignorance and fundamental dishonesty that make the SOL
"unassailable".

A good argument can be made that the Greeks did originate a particular style
of thinking but that unique style is the style of mathematical proof. Even
there much of early Greek mathematics was handed down from the Babylonians
and Egyptians and is not entirely discontinuous with them. The ideas of
subject/object and continuous/discontinuous are merely different outgrowths
of this style of mathematical thinking.

The SOL only persists because Bo has it stuck in his unassailable skull and
throws out anything that does not match his preconceptions. It is easy to
see why Platt buys in; Bo's chauvinistic anti-Semitic diatribes match his
own twisted thinking. Why Mary and Marsha aide in perpetuating this rubbish
is something of a mystery.