[MD] The SOL-ution

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi MOQ Discussers.  

Hope I have done the subscription procedure right and that this 
will reach you. It's been some time since I visited (haunted) these 
premises, but I've checked in at intervals and when I saw the 
SOL(SOLAQI) mentioned. I could not help my (vain) self.      

The discussion is fast and before I had finished one reply a lot 
more has been said. At first I made a kind of compilation with a 
snip from the various inputs with comments, but this grew beyond 
proportions so I'll have to limit myself. 

Ian
said that Pirsig treats the 4th. level as "scientific rationality 
(objectivity ..etc)". This is right (and partly right to treat it that 
way), but then he goes on to treat it as (a) "mind" contaminated 
by the said attitudes.     

Laramie 
commented "MOQ another level". It began (with me) as a 5th. 
level, but this is just as awkward as an intellectual pattern. The 
final form is that MOQ is the meta-level of its own dynamic/static 
reality, the same way that SOM was the meta-level of its subject/ 
object reality .... before stripped of its metaphysical "M" and its 
remains, the S/O aggregate, became MOQ's intellectual level.   

Laird
Raised the SOL issue in the first place (I believe) these words I 
must reproduce:

> Thinking that the MoQ is seriously opposed to SOM is a very dangerous
> road. The MoQ encompasses and tames SOM, and to some extent relies upon
> the fruits of SOM to provide strength to its argument. SOM provides an
> awful lot to our intellect and to trash it would be a catastrophic loss.

Because it's the best assessment I've seen of what started the 
SOL quest. SOM can't be discarded as a bad idea of an idea- 
intellect. It is the highest static good and  must be made MOQ's 
4th level; the stepping stone for the said Quality meta-level.  

> So back toward the original topic again... does a revised SOL improve
> the big picture? SOL/SOM as just one (though dominant) mode of
> intellect, objective reality within intellect 

IMO no revision is needed. "SOM as just one mode of intellect" is  
exactly what causes the mess. The 4th. level isn't just 
"objectivity", subjectivity is its inextricable counterpart. (ZMM 
page 367):

    "What is essential to understand at this point is that until 
    now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject 
    and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just 
    dialectical inventions that came later."  

Again: Intellect is the value of the subjective/objective DIVIDE!  

DMB 
Had a lot of objections, but none are valid. He reverts to intellect 
as "thinking" or mind, something even Pirsig rejected in the 
Turner letter. Again, intellect isn't scientific objectivity, 
subjectivity is part and parcel of its make-up. None real in 
themselves, only the S/O divide or aggregate counts.  

> If the intellect were limited to scientific materialism or to
> SOM, then it would be impossible to write the MOQ or to discuss it here.
> I mean, the falsity of that assertion is demonstrated here just about
> every day. Sigh.

Intellect is the VALUE of splitting existence into materialism and 
idealism, matter and mind, and the many S/O derivatives
 
What's more, the SOL was hinted at in the first proto-moq. Check 
ZMM's diagram page where Classic Quality - subtitled 
"intellectual" - is split into subjective/objective. Why Pirsig 
dropped Phaedru's great insight is a mystery, but by doing so he 
robbed the MOQ of its enormous potentials.  

Another thing, when hitting Ian over the head with examples of 
the social- intellectual relationship DMB becomes a SOL-ist by 
fetching them from the Greeks and how their SOM parted with 
their mythological past. (from DMB's Dec.9 "MoQ's fist principle")  

Like Pirsig, DMB wields the SOL when writing/thinking naturally, 
but when asked to define intellect it becomes something nobody 
knows what is.  

Bodvar "Bo" Skutvik.