[MD] The SOL-ution

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Laird 

On 11 Jan. you  wrote:

> Glad to see you back here - hopefully it won't be too short of a
> visit, we can use some more insightful voices!

Thanks a lot. How long I don't know. 
 
I had said:
> > Intellect is the VALUE of splitting existence into materialism and
> > idealism, matter and mind, and the many S/O derivatives
   
> [Laird]
> Yes, Certainly subjectivity is the inextricable counterpart of 
> objectivity. That's fundamental to SOM, making "SOM as just one mode
> of intellect" cover both subjectivity and objectivity. I'm failing to
> see any mess-causing going on.

Well it looks as if some see SOM as only covering "scientific 
objectivity", believing that the MOQ has an affinity for "idealist 
subjectivity". The latter is a blind alley that many has walked into, 
regrettably lead by some annotations in "Lila's Child".    

> I think the keystone of (at least my) questions circle around one
> specific point: Is the subject/object divide found in every
> intellectual pattern, or does the intellectual level include other
> patterns devoid of the subject-object divide? SOLAQI (subject-object
> logic AS quality-intellect) implies in its very name that the split is
> exhaustive... while many here (myself included) are taking the stance
> that the S/O divide is not and cannot be exhaustive.

Excellent put Laird, but here is the very mess-causation. Seeing 
the 4th level as "including other patterns devoid of the subject-
object divide" is the fault that has haunted the MOQ. In "Lila's 
Child" Pirsig gave examples of non-S/O patterns including 
mathematics, but if anything is S/O, it's math. People of old 
(3rd.level existence) knew how to calculate even by what we call 
mathematical/geometrical methods. Pythagoras learned this in 
Mesopotamia and Egypt, but his INTELLECTUAL achievement 
was the theorem, showing why squares on hypotenuses ...etc is 
valid always - an objective truth, not just something that builders 
used as a tool. They also knew about the plumb line, but making 
it into a theory of gravity is intellect.   

> In fact, the ZMM p367 quote above is one I'd quote to support this
> point. " Those [root S/O] divisions ... came later", and in some
> cultures didn't come at all. Should we say that patterns without S/O
> divisions cannot be intellectual patterns? What of Zen, and other
> Eastern patterns?

Yes, that's the very point: None-S/O patterns are not intellect. But 
we must realize that it has more subtle variants than the abstract/ 
concrete. ZMM saw Plato as one of the SOM instigators and his 
"idea/form" dichotomy looks looks diametrically opposite to 
modern SOM where ideas are abstract and thus irreal, but all 
these dualisms are intellect. Aristotle's "form/substance" too.    

In the letter to Paul Turner Pirsig was on the verge of accepting 
the SOL (no use extending intellect before the Greeks. And 
"Greek" in MOQ means SOM)) but then nullified it with "a 
separate Oriental intellectual level". As said before, even if life is 
found at a faraway planet it's NOT a "separate biological level", 
but separate biological patterns. 

Zen Buddhism is a MOQ-like meta-system where SOM  
(mind/matter) is a mere static level ...without having any level or 
S/O or anything. IMO the MOQ is a more concise metaphysics.          

> > [Bo] 
> > 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.  
 
> [Laird]
> I think Pirsig realized between ZMM and card-catalogging LILA that
> subjects and objects were not inherent pieces in his philosophy - not
> because they have no place, but because their place is unimportant to
> the core philosophy itself. Their place is still very important to us
> (as practitioners perhaps more than philosophers), and so we've kept
> looking for a better fit. After enough post-LILA prodding, Pirsig gave
> an answer I think was a dismissive, "here's a candy, now shut up" type
> answer on the subjective/objective front, and we're still untangling
> ourselves from the sticky strands of that candy-answer.

Well, I don't see it as a "realization", rather as a lost opportunity. 
Perhaps he saw the SOM=intellect assertion as the mad part and 
to achieve academical acceptance it had to be dropped in favor 
of the more SOM-like idea-intellect.      

IMO

Bo