[MD] What is SOM?

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Peter. 

You said:
> Your living arrangement sound most convenient!  Don't worry about
> the e-books; Marsha kindly forwarded copies within minutes of my
> posting the request. Incidentally, she did it by sending directly to
> my email address, circumventing moq_discuss which has a post size
> limit and doesn't seem to allow attachments. Thanks for trying
> anyway.

Good, I tried - to your address -  but my computer just froze.

(Peter)
> The Dynamic Quality is the unknowable lost time. That time is spent
> while the DQ is evaluated by the inorganic/organic processes of the
> body. Agreed that the S/O distinction takes place for purposes of
> communication in the intellect.

The "Cutting edge of time" is related to the "Hot Stove" of LILA 
and must have been a profound insight with Pirsig. The latter is 
often misunderstood as a demonstration of the autonomous 
nerve system, but regarding the former I take what follows "pre-
intellectual" (regardless the time lag) to be "intellectual" and 
consequently: Intellect is where the Subject and the World are 
split apart. I know your comments but  listen:      

At this early stage Phaedrus' premises was SOM and like the 
Artificial Intelligence researchers (who expect computers to wake 
up to awareness) he saw intellect as a subject's becoming 
AWARE of  the world while MOQ's intellectual level is merely the 
S/O split or aggregate.       

NB. This may be my own "Hot Stove" that I vainly try to convey, 
but there must come a day ;-)      

You continued:
>  But if the cat can be aware without naming where does it's awareness
> only  edge take place - you're going to say biological? 

First of all: Young Phaedrus deliberations above are from before 
the MOQ so there were no levels, this was his Herculean task of 
wrestling free from the SOM by showing that there is a deeper 
Quality reality that had created the S/O split. Later - in the MOQ - 
he postulated that it had created 3 existential levels before 
intellect's S/O. 

And now to your cat - not seen from the embryonic Quality Idea, 
but from the MOQ. A cat does not meet SOM's criterion of 
thinking "I'm a cat and over there is a church". The MOQ has 
nothing about awareness, but regards the S/O as its own 4th. 
level, thus the cat isn't intellectual neither in a SOM nor a MOQ 
context.          

> If an S/O distinction about seeing a church (for example) takes
> place intellectually is that idea then relegated back down to the
> social level? 

No, this is the said confusion of the first Quality Idea and the 
MOQ. Intellect's S/O (while SOM) indicates an irredeemable 
chasm between the subject and an indifferent world that blindly 
follows its natural laws. At the social level things are different

NB. The social level is still part of our existence, but is better 
understood from the past when it was "leading edge". 

Individuals had names and personalities and were just like 
ourselves, they saw objects and regarded themselves as subjects 
only there were no metaphysical subject/object chasm SOM. 
They participated in their own existence, rituals could sway the 
forces that ruled. These "forces" weren't science's natural laws, 
but personalities with emotions that could be mad but also would 
forgive. We see remnants of this reflected in religion where God 
can be mollified by prayers, offerings rituals (sacraments) and 
can save your soul (in Christendom)    

> One thing I haven't processed fully yet is Pirsig's description of
> his social and intellectual levels as consisting of ideas, eg the
> idea of the president of the USA. That idea cannot exist without the
> biological underpinning we call brain but nevertheless it does have
> a kind of independence;

This is the "Lila's Child" Pirsig who had lost touch with his own 
MOQ and I wince every time I read some of the "annotations", 
particularly the one you mention about how SOM fits into the 
MOQ. There are more, about how ideas come first ...  it's painful. 

>  you know Dawkins would call it a meme. The cat evaluates sense data it
> recognises into objects biologically, it doesn't have ideas, social or
> intellectual; so it's s/o split takes place in Pirsig's organic level?

>From the MOQ perspective the 4th. level's S/O is no longer a 
chasm between two universes, but an aggregate of immense 
value. Now, even if Dawkins is unaware of the Quality context his 
"meme" concept may be very useful, only that memes are no 
subjective something, but part of a meme/sense data aggregate. 
(I don't know much about Dawkins)    

> Do you think the cat makes objective distinctions but not subjective
> distinctions, does not consider itself but instead merely reacts to
> objective events?

In a MOQ perspective the cat is a biological pattern that 
perceives biological values, that's all the MOQ says. However, 
when the 4th. level surveys existence (below itself) the S/O 
matrix is useful. A cat can be treated like a subject in an 
objective environment, but in a Quality context there is no 
enigmatic questions if a cat is "aware about being a cat" and 
other SOM-induced paradoxes. 

> Please don't tear your hair out over these questions.

Not much left to tear out. Thanks for posing such intelligent and 
relevant questions. If you have managed to manoeuvred through 
my answers ..??.    

Bo