[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[Matt Kundert]

> [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
 		 	   		  
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