[MD] What is SOM?

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Craig,

You said:
> We have (a) subjects & objects in SOM, where they are the two  
> fundamental categories of existents & (b) subjective (social &  
> intellectual) & objective (inorganic & biological) static patterns  
> in the MOQ, where they comprise the fundamental categories only of  
> static existents.

Keep in mind also that the MOQ begins with the DQ/sq cut rather than  
the S/O first cut in SOM.

> IMHO (a) has its usual meaning.  The question for me is what is the  
> relation of (a) to (b)

I'm not sure what you mean by its usual meaning, but let me try to  
answer anyway...

To distinguish (a) and (b), first consider the relationship of  
subjects and objects in (a).

Pirsig:
"If the world consists only of patterns of mind and patterns of  
matter, what is the relationship between the two?  ...There is the  
materialist school that says reality is all matter, which creates  
mind. There is the idealist school that says it is all mind, which  
creates matter.  There is the positivist school which says this  
argument could go on forever; drop the subject.
That would be nice if you could, but unfortunately it is one of the most
tormenting problems of the physics to which positivism looks for  
guidance. The torment occurs not because of anything discovered in  
the laboratory. Data are data.  It is the intellectual framework with  
which one deals with the data that is at fault.  The fault is within  
subject-object metaphysics itself."

Steve:
(b) can still deal with S/O relationships with the static levels but  
can also explain how the levels relate to one another, while in (a)  
the two are separate universes.

Pirsig:
"A conventional subject-object metaphysics uses the same four static
patterns as the Metaphysics of Quality, dividing them into two groups  
of two: inorganic-biological patterns called "matter," and social- 
intellectual patterns called "mind."  But this division is the source  
of the problem. When a subject-object metaphysics regards matter and  
mind as eternally separate and eternally unalike, it creates a  
platypus bigger than the solar system.
It has to make this fatal division because it gives top position in its
structure to subjects and objects.  Everything has got to be object or
subject, substance or non-substance, because that's the primary  
division of the universe.  Inorganic-biological patterns are composed  
of "substance," and are therefore "objective."  Social-intellectual  
patterns are not composed of "substance" and are therefore called  
"subjective."  Then, having made this arbitrary division based on  
"substance," conventional metaphysics then asks, "What is the  
relationship between mind and matter, between subject and object?"
One answer is to fudge both mind and matter and the whole question  
that goes with them into another platypus called "man."  "Man" has a  
body (and therefore is not himself a body) and he also has a mind  
(and therefore is not himself a mind).  But if one asks what is this  
"man" (which is not a body and not a mind) one doesn't come up with  
anything.  There isn't any "man" independent of the patterns.  Man is  
the patterns. This fictitious "man" has many synonyms; "mankind,"  
"people," "the public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and  
"they."  Our language is so organized around them and they are so  
convenient to use it is impossible to get rid of them.  There is  
really no need to.  Like "substance" they can be used as long as it  
is remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and not  
some independent primary reality of their own. In a value-centered  
Metaphysics of Quality the four sets of static patterns are not  
isolated into separate compartments of mind and matter.  Matter is  
just a name for certain inorganic value patterns.  Biological  
patterns, social patterns, and intellectual patterns are supported by  
this pattern of matter but are independent of it.  They have rules  
and laws of their own that are not derivable from the rules or laws  
of substance.  This is not the customary way of thinking, but, when  
you stop to think about it you
wonder how you ever got conned into thinking otherwise.  What, after  
all, is the likelihood that an atom possesses within its own  
structure enough information to build the city of New York?   
Biological and social and intellectual patterns are not the  
possession of substance.  The laws that create and destroy these  
patterns are not the laws of electrons and protons and other  
elementary particles.  The forces that create and destroy these  
patterns are the forces of value.
So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all schools are  
right on the mind-matter question.  Mind is contained in static  
inorganic patterns.  Matter is contained in static intellectual  
patterns.  Both mind and matter are completely separate evolutionary  
levels of static patterns of value, and as such are capable of each  
containing the other without contradiction.
The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links
between these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded.   
Two terms are missing: biology and society.  Mental patterns do not  
originate out of inorganic nature.  They originate out of society,  
which originates out of biology which originates out of inorganic  
nature.  And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is  
as dominated by social patterns as social patterns are dominated by  
biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by  
inorganic patterns.  There is no  direct scientific connection  
between mind and matter. As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, said,  
"We are suspended in language."  Our intellectual description of  
nature is always culturally derived."

Sorry for the long quote, but RMP can explain it better than I can. I  
hope this answers your question.

Regards,
Steve