[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[Ham Priday]

Hi-ho Bo --


> This assertion (that intellect does not exist independently of
> their author) looked a bit peculiar at first, but is a perfect
> demonstration of the faulty understanding of the "intellectual
> level" that you (understandably) harbor, but that most MOQists
> shares with you, namely that of mind, and that mind is biological
> (brain) subsidiary.
>
> Why you associated me with this most un-MOQish understanding
> made me look at you original post of Monday 19.

I was wondering why I hadn't triggered a response from you.

Let me first confess that I never saw Pirsig's need to divide existence into 
a game of Animal-Vegetable-Mineral.  (I guess his patterning game goes 
Inorganic-Organic-Social-Intellectual?)   You've helped me understand that 
it's because of his anthropological orientation. The MOQ is probably the 
last of the Darwinian ontologies--everything evolves from simplicity to 
complexity,  so the 'yard lines' in Pirsig's game are really timeline 
markers.  That's somewhat ironic to me, for I think of time as the mode of 
subjective awareness; which means that Pirsig is defining his MOQ in SOM 
terms!

You also seem to hold to this tetra-level evolution:

> All levels rose on top of the former and adopted it for own
> purpose, thus intellect - as the highest level - sits on top of all
> lower levels. The ability to think (store and manipulate former
> experience, what we call "intelligence") the 4th. level adopted
> from the 2nd. (by way of the 3rd. that had exploited it for
> millennias) Language intellect adopted directly from the 3rd. Your
> "author" (the mind) is the 4th. levels name for the intelligent
> SUBJECT that - in intellect' view - resides in our brain. This
> mind/brain (S/O) distinction is intellect's VALUE!!!. The fact that
> this subject seemingly surveys both the subjective and the
> objective realities is result of ever more turns of the S/O screw. It
> has turned since the Greeks and we may no longer figure out all
> its intricacies. The MOQ is an Ariadne thread that finally can lead
> us out of intellect's S/O labyrinth.

Bo, isn't philosophy complex enough without having to build artificial 
labyrinths and multi-level steps to prop it up?
What's wrong with plain old subject/object duality?  Consider that duality 
is the beginning of numerality, and that existential reality in no more than 
a dichotomy--a subject looking at an object.  The physical world is far more 
complex, of course, but ontologically it's only the other half of the 
duality.  Nothing in existence commits us to a four-level ontology.  That's 
an arbitrary choice on the part of MOQ's author that everbody seems to have 
bought into without question, including Bo Skutvik.

> Who says that "Intellect is extracorporeal level".  It's
> "extra-social" if any, but listen for the millionth-and first time:

"Extra-social" is "extra-populus" is "extra-human" is "extra-corporeal" in 
my book.  WHY, Bo?  Why do you want to make the one faculty by which you 
experience reality and interpret the world an inanimate, non-human. lifeless 
level?  I find it incredulous that a sane, intelligent person would refuse 
to acknowledge the thoughts in his head as his own.

No wonder Phaedrus went nuts!!

Thanks for writing, Bo.  (I'll feel better after dinner.)

--Ham