[MD] The SOL-ution

[skutvik at online.no]

On 11 Jan 2007 at 21:28, david buchanan wrote:

> Hey Bo:
> Glad to know you're still out there reading, if not posting. Hope
> you're doing well.

Thanks David, you're such a nice guy when not obnoxious ;-)
(A definition of terms: Phaedrus=ZMM while Pirsig=LILA.)

> dmb says:
> Huh? Is that supposed to be a response to my assertion? It seems to me
> that there is an inescapable logic here that you have not addressed in
> the slightest. If the MOQ is an intellectual construct like all
> philosophical systems and it specifically rejects the assumptions of
> SOM, then the MOQ is an example of non-SOM intellect. 

The relationship between the MOQ and its own intellectual level 
is an intriguing issue. What is for sure is that the 4th. level is a 
MOQ pattern, not the other way around. However, it began as a 
SOM construct because Phaedrus was a SOM-ist. But the 
moment he rejected both S/O horns and "followed a path never 
taken before in the history of western thought" he began to leave 
SOM-land. And when he started to construct a Quality 
metaphysics where "Classic Quality=Intellect=SOM" the 
transition - inversion maybe - was completed: Intellect and MOQ 
had switched positions.    

> There are other
> examples mentioned by Pirsig, the philosophies of the East and even
> mathematics in the West, but I'm struck by the irony. See what I mean?
> The existence of the MOQ sort of proves that intellect is not limited
> to SOM. It seems to me that the only way to escape this logic is to
> invent a whole new level of reality. That is a cure worse than the
> disease.

In the letter to Paul Pirsig were on the verge of accepting the 
SOL (no use extending intellect much before the Greeks), but 
then he saw the trap and added the said comment about an 
Oriental intellect which is wrong. The Orientals have transcended 
intellect and arrived at some Quality-like level of their own, but 
that's another story.      

> dmb says:
> Thanks for comparing me to Bob.

You're welcome.

> And just for the record, I think I
> know what intellect is. I mean, I don't seem to have any trouble with
> the concept. It seems like something I use all the time and to be
> perfectly frank I fail to see why it has been the source of so much
> confusion for so many. 

Didn't Pirsig himself find the intellectual level troublesome?

    The question you raise about the intellectual level has 
    troubled me too. When I answered Dan Glover in Lila's 
    Child, I remember being a little annoyed that anyone 
    should ask what the intellectual level is-as though he were 
    asking me what I mean by the word, "the." Any definition 
    you give is more likely to complicate understanding than 
    simplify it. But since then I have seen the question grow 
    because the answer I have given is inadequate.  

> The whole SOLAQI thing for example, I never
> understood what the problem was in the first place. It seems to be
> that the intellectual knife can slice things up in any number of ways
> and there is no reason to believe that it must slice up reality into
> subjects and objects. 

As I have said before, (my) dictionary's definition of intellect is 
that of distinguishing between what's objective and what's 
subjective. Admittedly the definition starts with: "The power of 
mind to ....etc", and regrettably MIND has become the 
commonplace definition, but we're not here to "slosh old tea 
around". 

If you care to think things over intellect is always out to "slice" 
things a way that corresponds to objective reality (subjective the 
negative), while the social level does no slicing, but accepts 
God's words (it's ridiculous short-hand, but you know what I 
mean). Again, Phaedrus started from intellect's premises and 
(had to) continue its slicing, but arrived at a dualism 
(dynamic/static)* that cancelled the subject/object one.

*) The Dynamic/Static divide is implicit in the Romantic/Classic 
one.       

> Why not static and dynamic quality, for example?

As said. Phaedrus was submersed in SOM (what became 
intellect) until the insight that Quality was neither subjective nor 
objective. And as said until exhaustion, in the said proto-moq the 
Classic part is sub-titled "intellect" and divided into subject/object 
which shows that Phaedrus saw intellect*) as SOM. Why Pirsig 
abandoned this and created the intellectual mess that has 
haunted the MOQ ever since is the great mystery. But nothing 
will remedy it until Phaedrus' original insight is accepted.   

*) The proto-moq didn't have any "classic" divisions, but that 
makes no difference.  

> Again, the MOQ is exhibit A in the case that says there is more than
> one way to slice it. And anyone who hangs around in a place like this
> should have at least some idea of what that piece of evidence looks
> like, how it replaced one central division for another and why.

It's exactly this "piece of evidence" that drives me. The intellect 
we are supposed to speak about is a sub-set of a sub-set of the 
MOQ and can (by the container analogy) not contain the MOQ. 
Unless seen as MIND something you and Pirsig obviously do. But 
neither mind nor matter are valid in the MOQ so how you 
manage that feat ...?   

IMO

Bo