[MD] What all is about.

[skutvik at online.no]

Ham and interested parties

4 Nov. you wrote:

> I'm glad the discussion has been productive for you.

I'll give you credit for helping me see the Archimedean Point. As 
an outspoken somist you are clearer on that "point" than many of  
the self-appointed moqists.   

> I mean you have dug yourself into the hole that Pirsig carefully
> avoided; namely, positing Intellect as an ideation source that
> transcends the individual.

But at times you sound like an Old Peoples' Home inmate 
repeating things regardless of your room mate's argument. And 
can anything be said without "transcending the individual", i.e. 
assuming that there is a reality greater than individual who 
speaks about it? Even in SOM this is impossible.    

> The SO dichotomy may be paradoxical, bit it's a dilemma only for those
> who insist on an existential reality.  Quality is not alone in being
> exclusively neither mind nor matter; this is also true of Freedom,
> Excellence, Beauty, Love, Balance, Goodness, Integrity, Harmony,
> Symmetry, Magnificence, and dozens of other attributions, even
> Consciousness itself.  Must we regard them all as Quality?

A most valid point Ham. I have been dubious regarding the 
Quality part (Reality=Reality or Reality=Quality don't seem so 
important) and have seen the Dynamic/Static divide as the 
crucial part, but Pirsig's point is that existence is an evolution 
towards the better and in that sense Quality is BEST. I combine 
Quality and D/S by seeing the DQ/DQ  as MOQ's first postulate.

More valid points. There are several concepts that escape the 
S/O matrix, and as a veteran of this site you will remember how 
many MO -Xs that have been proposed, but as all just copies the 
MOQ Quality is the mother of them all.  

Re. Harmony which was Poincare's ultimate, Pirsig saw this as 
equal to his own Quality        

     But we know from Phædrus' metaphysics that the 
    harmony Poincaré talked about is not subjective. It is the 
    source of subjects and objects and exists in an anterior 
    relationship to them. It is not capricious, it is the force that 
    opposes capriciousness; the ordering principle of all 
    scientific and mathematical thought which destroys 
    capriciousness, and without which no scientific thought 
    can proceed. (ZAMM)

P. had not spotted the SOM at this time - not to speak of 
formulating a MOQ - he sees "scientific thought" as his 
antagonist and his task to be that of uniting science and art  

> As your new header implies, the point is that existence is a
> differentiated "all".  Everything in it is a being-made-aware--an
> object perceived subjectively.  In other words, Existence = SOM.  All
> is about the relation between individuated sensibility and
> differentiated otherness.  

If SOM poses no problem why bother, but you seem like having 
passed all philosophy by since Aristotles. The empiricists, 
Berkeley who found that "everything exists in our mind only". 
Immanuel Kant who believed he came to common sense's 
rescue (that there is a S/O, not only S) but ended with postulating 
a reality (Das Ding an Sich) out there, completely ineffable. 
Modern physics still worse solipsisms. Is this no problem?  

> The MOQers want to make Existence their
> reality by pretending that there are no differences--that everything
> is a category, level, or pattern of something arbitrarily labeled
> Quality.  But differences do not go away, subject and object do not
> merge in experience, space and duration do not vanish from the
> universe, my awareness and values do not become your awareness and
> values.

Well, again, a DQ/SQ metaphysics makes sense of everything 
SOM makes enigmatic . The said differences are not supposed to 
go away, they are the 4th. level's values! To see your awareness 
as different from mine, subject from object, matter from mind .. 
etc is the highest Quality there is, but the enigmas that intellect - 
as SOM - creates is (in the MOQ) due to the fact that it's a static 
level, not reality's ground.     

> Whatever the Stone Agers conceptualized was as "intellectual" as
> anything we conceptualize today.  To say they were not intellectuals
> is a subjective judgment based on when you think "intellectuality"
> came on the scene.  How do you know there were no skeptics in the
> Stone Age?   There was no language by which to communicate skepticism.
>  Also, what do you mean by "these weren't theories about reality,
> rather reality itself"?   And Muslims are "latter day social-level
> people"??     What on earth does that mean?

This argument you can't counter without a lot of nonsense that 
you KNOW is nonsense. Ancient people had language and the 
terms to communicate truthfulness from lies but did not know the 
OBJECTIVE TRUTH different from MERE OPINION dichotomy, 
this capacity arrived with the Greeks as SOM  ... as intellect with 
Pirsig.

With Aristotles the term "metaphysics" became a theory ABOUT  
reality. A dichotomy unknown to the said Stone Ager. 

The Muslim world as a "stone age" (social level) culture in the 
sense of not having adapted intellect as their focus. Europe and 
Christendom was like that before the Greek "spirit" - SOM or 
Intellect - recovered from the Medieval hiatus.

It's all this that gives the MOQ its enormous explanatory power 
and leaves SOM behind in its paradoxical dust. But if your sole 
mission is to say "no" to it all ...phew. I'm not asking you to leave 
dear Ham, you philosophize at least. 

Bo