[MD] What is SOM?

[Ron Kulp]

dmb says:
Thanks to some recent help from Ron, it seems pretty clear to me now
that there are at least two different things going on here and they are
conflated and confused in various ways. I'm talking about SOM and
essentialism. These are not identical. SOM is a kind of essentialism,
but there are other kinds, although the former is usually a subset of
the latter. I say "usually" because the MOQ retains SOM in a
non-essentialist way.

If logic has been "predicated on truth in being" since Aristotle, as he
and Paul explain, then truth has been what corresponds to objects and
these entities are thought to be what actually is, what actually exists.
But this is approximately the opposite of what Plato says and he's the
original essentialist. Aristotle's metaphysics of substance rejects and
reversed Plato's theory of forms and yet they're both essentialists. I'd
like to suggest that a similar thing happens here. The MOQ rejects SOM
and essentialism. The latter is so important that it might be better to
say the MOQ rejects som AS essentialism, AS an ontological ground. It
can reject this essentialist element even while it accepts "subjects"
and "objects" as useful concepts. That's how it has a place in the MOQ,
Bo. 

Ron:
Damn Dave, when it clicks.. it clicks!.. I've tried to explained this to
Bo that SOL is remaking MoQ into another form of, and what you rightly
point out as, what amounts to essentialism (in the traditional sense)
and that
ultimately its superfluous to the understanding of the rejection of 
essentialism In fact it confuses the issue. 

Dmb:
I think Gav makes a good point but it doesn't quite address the question
about "where we are when we are in SOM". I think scientific objectivity
has produced an affliction we call alienation and the objectification of
nature in particular is a freaking disaster but I suspect Bo's question
goes in different direction. Alienation is a consequence of SOM but Bo
is interested in the nature of the levels themselves, thus he rejects
Gav's answer because there is no "alienation level". Instead of trying
to answer Bo's question, I'd make a case the question only makes sense
if the MOQ is a rival form of essentialism. This is probably the source
of many such questions and the basis of the theory that SOM and
intellect are the same thing. In other words, Bo takes the levels of the
MOQ as an ontology, as what actually exists, rather than an intellectual
description that categorizes experience. I mean, the MOQ says that
experience IS reality, that reality is phenomenal and not ontological.

Ron:
Because Bo equates ontology with intellect, he sees MoQ as an
 evolutionary step intellectually. Which calls the whole level system
into question and all the fuss about a 5th level and all sorts of
explanations to accommodate it.

dmb continues:
if the MOQ's levels are taken as an essentialist claim, as an
ontological claim, then it would raise the question of how SOM can exist
within it. It would seem like a claim that one universe can fit inside
another, like reality can have two different shapes at the same time. 

So basically, I think there are lots of problems when we try to reject
SOM without also rejecting essentialism. 

dmb says:
Its true that the MOQ reduces SOM to a set of static patterns, to a set
of ideas ABOUT reality, the MOQ also says the same thing about itself.
The MOQ is also a set of intellectual patterns. See, if the MOQ's levels
are taken as an ontology then it has to replace SOM entirely. We have to
get rid of it because it does not correspond to the actual nature of
reality, which is a pluralism composed of DQ and the 4 levels rather
than a dualism composed of subjects and objects. But this would be the
mistake of trading one essentialism for another essentialism. On this
view, the static levels are something like things-in-themselves, the new
ontological ground that replaces the old ontological ground. 

Ron smiles at Dmb's clear observance:
This is what has been holding the MD discuss back.

Dmb:
But as in the art gallery analogy, the MOQ says there is no ontological
ground to which our intellectual descriptions must correspond. As Matt
Kundert might put it, the phenomenal reality doesn't have any joints
such that we have to carve it up this way or that to be "right". These
intel
 lectual descriptions, metaphysical systems and the various worldviews
can exist side by side. There are reasons to think some are better than
others, but this does not depend on their proximity to how things
"really" are. This is true of the MOQ as well. There are reasons to
think it is better than SOM, but not because its truer in any absolute
sense. In other words, it rejects essentialism even with respect to
itself. When we take the MOQ otherwise, it produces a lot of fake
problems as to the "real" nature of the levels.

Ron:
Ka-ching!


dmb says:
The fact that this assertion continues to be made in the face of such
obvious and relevant counter-examples is extremely frustrating. Pirsig's
non-SOM thinking and this thinking is supposedly familiar to us all. In
this context, frankly, the assertion is pure nonsense. Asserting it is
not only obviously wrong, its destructive. If SOM i
 s the problem and SOM is equal to intellect, then intellect is the
problem. Yikes! That's the paralysis I speak of and it has done as much
damage as anything else in terms of preventing a fruitful discussion.

Ron:
Again, right on the money. 

Dmb:
I suspect this is the basis for the general disrespect for definitions
and the basis of  anti-intellectualism. Even if there were no other
reasons to deny that intellect and SOM were identical, no obvious
counter examples, these consequences would be enough reason to reject
it. 

To reject essentialism and SOM is to reject a certain definition of
reality but that is not at all the same as rejecting definitions per se.
The MOQ is full of them. This would make a little more sense in the
context of a discussion about mystical experience, but conventional
concepts are perfectly appropriate in the everyday conventional world.
And they're absolutely crucial wherever one wishes to discuss
metaphysics. 

I think the assertion might be a bad interpretation of the idea we
cannot escape from the mythos, that we can only think in terms of the
concepts and thought categories handed down to us through language and
culture. On this view, I suppose, all of that is SOM-based. But Pirsig
points out that the MOQ is derived from that same mythos and insists
that it couldn't be otherwise. It is derived from some deeply hidden,
submerged roots of that culture but it comes from the same mythos all
the same. This is another reason to deny that we're fated to think in
terms of SOM, that SOM is a subset of the terms in which we can think. 

Finally, to equate intellect with SOM denies the possibility of reading
and understanding the post you just read and, hopefully, understood.

Thanks.

Ron:
Standing ovation from the cheap seats Dave.




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