[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[John Carl]

Dear Bo,

 You'd have my vote based on two longstanding loves of mine:  one, I
appreciate loyalty and you've been very consistent in promoting your vision;
two, I appreciate  contrarians brave enough to stand against the will of the
crowd.

However, your stance doesn't make any sense except as a diatribe of a man
stuck in SOM, who therefore asserts that everybody must be.  So I just can't
flow with it.

You think the elephant MUST be like a tree, because that big hind leg is all
you  experience.

Mebbe its my fault for not communicating my experience of the snakiness
aspects better.


On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:58 AM, <skutvik at online.no> wrote:

> Matt, Andre, All:
>
> Andre originally:
> > > Mr. Pirsig did NOT regard 'intellect = the S/O distinction' in ZMM!
>
> It's difficult when someone denies facts. I the diagram section of
> ZAMM the "Classic" (Romantic/Classic was the proto version of the
> Dynamic/Static)


The romantic/classic distinction is completely different than the
dynamic/static.  An artist can objectively represent his reality on canvas
romantically, or a scientist can objectively represent his ideas
classically.  The artistic aesthetic continuum and the classic intellectual
continuum, together make up the 4th level with the romantically-oriented
artistic side the "higher" level of consciousness.

But intellectual formulation of non-S/O consciousness are much more
enlightened, that is "evolved" than S/O formulations and artistic
formulations that transcend S/O thinking are much more advanced than
simplistic subjective norman rockwell type artistic endeavors, and so the
idea that S/O is "all there is" is the very most basic kindergarten
beginnings of this 4th level.  Or as Royce puts it, "Realism is a theory of
being that no serious thinker holds for long."


 Bo:

part is the subject/object aggregate or distinction and
> this is also called INTELLECT.



John:

More accurately, it's the primary aspect of intellect that Bodvar identifies
with.

Bo:


> Moreover, in the preliminaries to
> diagram-drawing Quality is "pre-intellectual"  while "intellectual" is the
> object becoming aware of subjects.



John:

Huh?  Any definition of awareness implies subjects aware of objects, not the
other way around.  Horse is either right and you're smokin' something you
shouldn't, or I'm right and you're not smoking something you should.

Bo:


> At that stage SOM (subjects and
> objects) was the only "static" fall-out, but at least that's how far he
> brought it .... and is there for those who can read.
>
>
John:

I believe there are many who can read, who get a completely different "read"
on the situation than the one you present.  I'm one of them.

And you certainly can't lump ME in with the "evil acerdemic crowd", goodness
knows.



> Matt:
> > 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.
>
>
Bo:


> Has it never crossed your un-prejudiced mind that it is the true
> interpretation of the MOQ that gives those who have seen it their
> stamina, while the false ditto made all those you mention drop out.
> BTW Paul Turner left after the famous letter where Pirsig began by
> saying that there were problems with the (original) intellectual level.
>
>
John:

And has it ever crossed your mind, Bo, that even if you were 100% right, and
everybody else including Pirsig was wrong, you'd still be wrong because you
fail the crucial test of "intersubjective agreement".   Meaning is socially
construed and created, and Matt's pointing out to you that your very
inflexibility is a proof of wrongness.  Truly seeking and thinking students
of truth, question themselves more than you do.  DQ means "D-Y-N-A-M-I-C"
Quality.

Something so fixed and static as your SOL has to be wrong, simply because of
the staticity of its intellectual formulation.


 Matt:

> 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.
>
>
Bo:


> My argument has evolved, constantly finding new evidence of the SOL
> and by being confronted with ever new "defenders of the mindish 4th.
> level (that Pirsig himself has rejected) my argument has gone through
> more phases than I can count and/or recount because those who don't
> like it don't read it anyway..
>
> Bodvar
>
>

John:


Ok.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe you're real flexible in your thinking.  I admit
I skim sometimes because it does seem to me that you just keep repeating the
same incomprehensible formulations.   But then I see others, others with
evidently very good brains, devoted to the study of philosophers.
Admittedly, such are, a bit, philosophologists.  But I think there is a
place for philosophology and one place it's very valued is in the critique
of philosophy and these do not give your postulations much credence at all.


Who have you hooked?

Marsha, Mary and Platt.

Two chicks and a contrarian.

Not that I don't just LOVE contrarians and chicks, but I don't see it as
intellectual affirmation of your position.

I love you uncle Bo, and I don't want you to stop.  But I would appreciate
it if you'd pause a bit and consider a different way of looking at this.

My theory is that you just need a good realization, and you'd be fine.  I
started a story for you, months and months ago that I never quite finished,
but I think its time to inflict it upon you.  For one thing, it's a fishing
story and Matt's quote (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.)  is just
too synchronicitically delicious to pass up.

Take Care,

John


PS:  Who gives a shit what "Paul Turner" did?  He's gone, outta the dialogue
and thus irrelevant to any conversation in the now.

He isn't missed  a bit.