[MD] SOLAQI, Kant's TITs, chaos, and the S/I distinction
Laird Bedore
lmbedore at vectorstar.com
Thu Dec 21 17:02:08 PST 2006
Hi everyone,
These various ideas and the relationships between them have been
bouncing around in my head for quite a while. The recent discussions -
particularly around the S/I distinction and potential applicability of
the Bodvar Stutvik's SOLAQI - spurred me to stuff 'em into a little
essay and see what comes out. The ideas build on each other in some
faint resemblance of order. This is very much a thought experiment
in-progress!
About the SOL:
The first time I read Stutvik's SOL essay was just after it was
published on moq.org in May 2005. Despite that I liked some of its
ideas, it didn't set right with me and I wasn't sure why. One thing I
was sure of was my dislike of the word "logic" in the name:
"Subject-object Logic as Quality's Intellect". Since then I've come to
prefer "Subject-object Rationality" instead.
The second time through I really liked it. Two things in particular came
to mind: First, Pirsig's description of the inorganic/biological levels
as objective reality and the social/intellectual levels as subjective
reality felt like a hasty dismissal of the question, "how to subjects
and objects fit into the MoQ?" His description felt like the Return of
the Hypothesis Problem (Part Deux!) - by answering the question, more
and more nasty questions arose. Second, snuggling up subjects, objects
and their interaction and calling it the intellectual level felt like a
better fit and gave me the feeling of answering more of those lingering
questions.
The third time through I got an uneasy feeling. Some questions started
popping up, particularly around the origin of non-S/O-dominant mythos in
other cultures. treating SOL exhaustively as the intellectual level
didn't leave room for these other mythos! From my own experiences I
sense there's an ability to experience intellectual patterns prior to
(or without) the S/O split, although it's been an extremely rare
sensation. I equate the goal of Zen to the experience of all
intellectual patterns without an S/O split. So now I think that the
subject-object relationship is within intellect but is NOT exhaustive.
It is the predominant mode of the intellectual level, particularly in
greek-derived cultures, but not the only mode.
About Kant's TITs:
Well, not just Kant's TITs, this goes into ultimate reality and static
patterns of value in general. For what it's worth I think Kant had great
TITs which have gone misunderstood... Let's see if the following ideas
are any good!
Static latching is the actualization of patterns from DQ. Static
patterns of value (SPoV) are those patterns actualized into being - ALL
the raw stuff of ultimate reality. Exhaustive. Building from the SOL,
ultimate reality is NOT analogous to objective reality because objective
reality is within intellect, whereas the exhaustive set of SPoV are not
only greater than the intellectual level but completely contain it.
Solving A simplified pseudo-equation:
ultimate reality = SPoV
SPoV = (inorganic+biological+social+intellectual), thus
SPoV > intellectual
intellectual > (subject+object), thus
intellectual > objective reality
... reducing to ...
ultimate reality > objective reality
Now, onto Kant and his TITs. Kant was struggling with the S/O split and
yearned to describe reality transcending subjects and objects. So he
coined the term "things in themselves" to describe this reality prior to
the S/O split. The term "things in themselves" is not analogous to
"objects in themselves". I think "SPoV prior to S/O split" is more
appropriate. He considered this reality exhaustive. An exhaustive set of
SPoV is identical to the ultimate reality above. So in short I think
Kant's TITs simply referred to all static patterns of value with no
intention of treating them as objective reality.
On DQ / Chaos:
The sensation I've got from Pirsig's writing is that he does not like
equating DQ with chaos... but ultimately the two terms point at the same
thing - absolute undefined potentiality. To me it seems a choice of the
"glasses" we use to filter the view - it's called DQ when wearing our
"MOQ/Good is a noun" glasses and called chaos when wearing our
"SOM/value-free" glasses. I've been looking for a show-stopping
distinction between the two but so far nothing has stuck for me. With
both, static stuff emerges from dynamic stuff. Quality is not always
"good" - it's a spectrum from the highest of high quality to the lowest
of low quality. In Pirsig's English class, there were high-quality
papers and low-quality papers, but both emerged from "nothing/nowhere"
and landed on a sheet of paper. So where's the beef? I think the word
"chaos" has a crappy connotation but I don't see any serious difference.
Further into the thought experiment - DQ and chaos are both exhaustive
potentialities. Let's assume based on Pirsig's connotations (inorganic
triumphs over chaos/etc, intellectual stretches toward DQ/etc) that
chaos is an infinite amount of black dots on an endless plane and DQ is
an infinite amount of white dots. As I've repeated in too many ways to
make for decent essay-writing, both are exhaustive, infinite, so each
must be everywhere on the plain at the same time. The plane looks like a
massive sea of grey on and on to infinity... So why distinguish between
chaos and DQ? They could just as easily be the same and be grey with the
potentiality of being black, white, or any shade inbetween. When a
distinction is created, it seems like semantics in order to avoid the
whole potentiality factor, which is at the heart of both chaos and DQ.
On the S/I distinction:
The quotes Dan Glover provided were superb. The first one in particular
struck me as a good example of avoiding SOM traps to describe the MoQ
levels:
"When getting into a definition of the intellectual level much clarity
can be gained by recognizing a parallel with the lower levels. Just as
every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all inorganic
patterns are biological; and just as every social level is also
biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every
intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are
intellectual. Handshaking, ballroom dancing, raising one's right hand to
take an oath, tipping one's hat to the ladies, saying "Gesundheit !"
after a sneeze-there are trillions of social customs that have no
intellectual component. Intellectuality occurs when these customs as
well as biological and inorganic patterns are designated with a sign
that stands for them and these signs are manipulated independently of
the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can then be defined very
loosely as the level of independently manipulable signs. Grammar, logic
and mathematics can be described as the rules of this sign
manipulation." (Robert Pirsig)
An idea I've been tinkering around with is to consider the social level
to be a level where only one layer (or a finite number) of abstraction
is possible, and the intellectual level allows many (or perhaps
infinite) nested/recursive layers of abstraction to take place. Not sure
if this is useful, but it seemed decent. Another simple little example:
Social:
(subject) person following the (object) rules of crossing the street
Intellectual:
(subject) person questioning the purpose of the (object) road sign
(subject) road sign describing the (object) rules of crossing the street
Well, that's all I can squeeze out of my noggin for tonight! Open fire! :)
-Laird
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