[MD] SOLAQI, Kant's TITs, chaos, and the S/I distinction

[Case]

Laird,

I know how frustrating it can be to put a lot of thought into a post and
have everyone ignore it. Heck everyone here does. So I just wanted to say
that while I am not up on Stutvik's essay. The rest of what you say
certainly resonates with what I have been trying to get across. I could
nitpick here and there but that is kind of how I see it. I am a bit
surprised no one has beaten you over the head over this. I do recall
Stutvik's view being pretty seriously attacked in the past and I don't think
my positions have sparked that many "Aha" moments from the faithful.

Case

-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Laird Bedore
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 8:02 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] SOLAQI, Kant's TITs, chaos, and the S/I distinction

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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