[MD] The SOM-MOQ relationship.

[Ant McWatt]

Bo,

You stated December 11th:

“Well, Quality=Reality so that's "understood" by [a child or a pet 
bear/rabbit/cat/amoeba], but Pirsig's point in the "infant" passage below is 
that by intellect's reasoning there is no higher view than its S/O one.”

Ant McWatt remarks:

I think the primary point of Pirsig in the paragraph you quote from LILA 
below is that reality isn’t just what a postivistically orientated thinker 
can put through their linguistic letterbox of words but experience as a 
whole.  The experience which also includes Dynamic Quality, concepts by 
intuition (e.g. colours, sounds, other sensations) and then – and only then 
- concepts by postulation (such as trees, atoms, people, tables, Daniel 
Dennett, pet bears, the Christian God etc).

I do agree that the type of scientist referred to in LILA is largely the 
“Galileo to Einstein” era archetype who has an SOM view of reality.  
However, there is no convincing evidence in the paragraph you quote or 
elsewhere in Pirsig’s work (for that matter) that this particular SOM 
viewpoint is ALL there is to the intellectual level of the MOQ.  As such, 
would you agree that your assertion of December 9th (to Ian) that “The MOQ 
is supposed to be understood by a child, not something that requires 
‘enlightenment’” is incorrect and misleading?

Mind you I haven’t yet given a copy of LILA to my pet bear “Bruno” so maybe 
I might be wrong….  Possibly an idea for Xmas.  (-:

>     By this criterion shouldn't all but a handful of the world's
>     most advanced physicists be locked up for life?  Who is
>     crazy here and who is sane? In a value-centered
>     Metaphysics of Quality this "scientific reality" platypus
>     vanishes.  Reality, which is value, is understood by every
>     infant. It is a universal starting place of experience that
>     everyone is confronted with all the time.  Within a
>     Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static
>     intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the
>     patterns are not the reality they describe.

Bo stated December 11th:

>Look to something Mike wrote in his message of 8 December:
>
>Hence the obsession of the more turgid Western philosophers with
>"sense deception", not realising that the senses never deceive - it is the
>interpretation that can be erroneous. For example, Descartes' senses do
>not lie when he sees a stick half-submerged in water. Data are data.

Ant McWatt comments:

I enjoyed reading some of Mike Hamilton’s ideas in this post such as his 
conjecture “that intellect was born when the first lie was uttered by a 
human being” and his speculations concerning monotheism and Descartes.  
However, Pirsig’s equating of SOM with inorganic, biological, social and 
intellectual static quality patterns is only a loose one.  Analogous to 
calling cricket and baseball the same game.

For instance, unlike in SOM, mind and matter (as the four static quality 
patterns) are the same type of “substance” (or “stuff” as Dr Robert Harris 
is prone to say) in the MOQ while in Cartesian SOM, mind and matter are two 
different ontological substances and, as you note in your “Quality Event” 
paper, it should be impossible for two such substances to have an effect on 
each other – yet this model is disproved in practice by simply deciding to 
move your little finger.  This metaphysical problem is removed in the MOQ 
because everything in this system is a manifestation of the same ontological 
“stuff”.  That doesn’t mean the scientific workings of this relationship are 
fully known - or will ever be known - but that is largely a different issue.

Bo continued on December 11th:

>To [SOM] intellect… sense-experience is notoriously deceptive
>(read: subjective) but on the other hand senses are the only
>means of perception so in no way can [SOM] intellect solve this riddle,
>only the MOQ can because intellect [in the MOQ] is a (mere) static level
>of its own.
>
>In the "infant" quote science - more specific physics - is the SOM
>representative (as usual) not intellect, for the reason that the
>mind-definition of intellect was current when writing LILA and it
>seems indelible regardless of Pirsig's later rejecting it.

Ant McWatt comments:

I do think it would been helpful – at least from a philosophological point 
of view - if Pirsig had clarified what he meant by the intellectual level to 
a larger extent in LILA but intellect as a form of expanded MOQ rationality 
(as found in ZMM and later commentary) can be surmised far more easily from 
Pirsig’s work - overall - than SOLAQI.  As Paul has already noted, in 
Pirsig's correspondence, he sees the MOQ as being explained by both ZMM and 
LILA.  It is only where the earlier book contradicts the later one (such as 
the classic-romantic split) that it is disregarded.

Bo continued on December 11th:

>However, that of intellect being the S/O divide is now established I dare 
>say…

Ant McWatt comments:

Dare I say, when you state “established”, do you mean “established in the 
grave” in the sense that Rhonda (Dave Buchanan’s late, great if small Honda) 
and Richard Pryor (an influence on that other late great American comedian, 
Bill Hicks) are “established in the grave”?  (-:

Best wishes,

Anthony.



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