[MD] What is SOM?

[Krimel]

Ron, dmb:
I have tried to stay focused on those things that are essential for me to
focus on these days but this nest of confusion has cried out for reply.
Since everyone was giving it the attention it deserved, which is to say
none, I was content to just stew on it. But since it has provoked a
response, even applause, I have a compulsion to address its shortcoming.

First essentialism is a term so fuzzy that it could mean darn near anything.
It is so vague that Ham has appropriated it as his personal "philosophy" and
converted it into a term in his private language, Hamish. It could mean
something as straightforward as the defining characteristic of a set. But as
dmb describes it, it appears to mean monism. If Plato and Aristotle
represent the poles of idealism and realism and both are "essentialist" in
dmb's usage; I'm not sure what else it could mean. Both schools seek to use
their respective views as the ontological ground of being.

If this is the case then, a major portion of dmb's post is little more than
a meditation on his confusion about a very basic metaphysical conundrum. Is
the world an ontological unity or an ontological plurality? 

dmb's confusion is most obvious here when he says: "We have to
get rid of it (the dreaded SOM) 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."

Here he is ignoring the problem of SOM that has troubled most commentators
which is the "essential" dualism of an ontology made up of mental substance
and physical substance. He highlights this by grossly misrepresenting the
MoQ as a plurality. Pirsig was at pains to avoid this metaphysically while
accounting for it pragmatically. There are other examples of monistic
systems that are treated pluralistically. Christianity does this by
recognizing three aspects of the unity of God. Or the more obnoxious duality
of Christianity into God versus Satan which results from Jewish exposure to
Zoroastrian during the intertestimental period. Zoroastrianism is explicitly
dualistic and has had a pernicious influence on Christian theology. Taoism
upon which the MoQ is based notes the division of the unity into active and
passive from which emerge the 10,000 things.

Still no self respecting Christian, Taoist or MoQer should be willing to
give credence to the idea that they are espousing a dualism or a plurality.

Furthermore, in this statement dmb reveals an even greater misrepresentation
of the MoQ, although perhaps a more common one in these parts. The unity of
the MoQ is in Quality. Quality has two aspects, that is, it is perceived as
static or relatively fixed patterns and dynamic or fluid uncertainty. These
are not metaphysically or ontologically basic but arise as an esthetically
pleasing first cut with the metaphysician's knife.

In his misuse of the art gallery example dmb does a bit of slight of hand
when he says, "...the MOQ says there is no ontological ground to which our
intellectual descriptions must correspond." This is obviously nonsense.
Without ontological fixity, pigs really might fly out of dmb's butt. The sky
might turn tangerine and apples might fall up. dmb's slight of hand here is
to confuse ontology, what is, with epistemology, or what we know. We might
come up with any number of descriptions of what is, epistemologically. These
we can and do judge esthetically. But this is very different from saying the
ontological ground is in any sense arbitrary.

The MoQ does not reject SOM for epistemological reason as it claims that
this is one possible way of understanding the world. But it does reject SO's
ontological claim that subjects and objects are irreducible and
ontologically distinct. The MoQ, if properly framed, avoids this dualism as
one might do in Chaos theory by stating that order is not distinct from
disorder but is a subset or type of disorder. Thus SQ is not ontologically
distinct from DQ at all. They are both manifestations of Quality.

As I have said before what dmb is really doing is not metaphysics but
esthetics. He continues to make romantic arguments against a classical
understanding. He reveals that clearly when he says, "I think scientific
objectivity has produced an affliction we call alienation and the
objectification of nature in particular is a freaking disaster..."

What we see in the modern world is not disaster so much as the emergence of
opposites. For every benefit derived from technology there are equal and
opposite negative applications. Science expands knowledge. It is a tool of
the intellect. How and why we use and distribute that knowledge is in the
domain of economics, ethics, the humanities and other important areas of the
intellect. If science has "caused" alienation, which I personally doubt,
then from an MoQ perspective it does so because it is a source of Dynamic
Quality.

Science over the past 400 years has allowed the intellectual level to expand
dynamically at such a rapid rate that other levels are not able to adjust or
develop static latches rapidly enough to keep up. It is this dual quality of
the dynamic that so many here ignore. This crippling fault in the
interpretation of DQ as "betterness" is at the root of much of quagmire the
MoQ is sinking into. It results I think from this romantic impulse to grasp
and cling to an esthetic that simply doesn't apply.

My aversion to the MoQ levels is well known and well documented. But I think
a least with regard to the intellectual level there is a path that leads to
greater clarity. The underlying basis for any system of hierarchy or levels
is that one level grows out of the levels below it. In order for this to
occur there must exist a high degree of static quality at the lower levels.
If for example ontology at the inorganic level were arbitrary then disorder
would reign. Pure Dynamic Quality is the absence of pattern, stability,
predictability. The biological level with its dependence on static qualities
such as chemical bonding, heat, light, mass, gravity, etc. could never
emerge. 

The intellectual level is alleged then to emerge from underlying stability
at the social level. When people are able to establish order in their daily
interactions they allow time from ideas, intellectual constructs to grow and
be passed among themselves and their children. This growth occurs even in
primitive human cultures where the intellectual level is transmitted orally
and in the form of myth and legend. With the advent of "civilization" and
writing more knowledge can accumulate in encoded form and be passed not just
from generation to generation but across the generations. The printing press
allowed greater access to more people. By now we live in an era where so
much knowledge is accumulating so fast and is available to so many people
that the dynamic quality of this is intimidating and threatening.

When knowledge accumulates it must be processed and converted into wisdom
and understanding. These are intellectual static latches or one might say
paradigms. Again what we see today is knowledge expanding in such a dynamic
rate that the paradigms shift so fast regular folks have trouble keeping up.
That is the source of alienation and disaster. It is a failure to process
the expansion of the intellectual level.

There are two other views of the intellectual level that should be
mentioned. First is the Bovine view of SOL. This is so obviously mistaken
that even dmb's post offers plenty of reason for rejecting it. 

The second is one most often espoused by Arlo and with which I am personally
somewhat sympathetic. This is the notion that the intellectual level is the
manipulation of symbols or the semiotic level. There are a couple of
problems with this view. First is that language and the use of symbols
appears to arise biologically through the biologically adaptive strategy of
forming into societies. While there is a clear set of interactions going on
between the biological and social to produce the ability to think
symbolically the ability is nonetheless biologically and socially
transmitted. 

The other problem with this view is that it confuses the code with the
content. Language is the encoding of information into a form that allows it
to be transmitted between and among individuals. Ideas are not the code they
are the meaning contained in the code. The ideas, the knowledge, the meaning
are what comprise the intellectual level not the code itself. The ability to
encode and decode does not produce ideas or the growth of knowledge it is
rather the vehicle that allows them to persist and expand. The intellectual
level then is quite simply, information.

What dmb in his romantic haze fails to grasp is that ending or slowing the
alienation is only possible in two ways. One is for it to stop. This is the
apocalyptic vision of cultists and religious fundamentalists. The second
more hopeful way is to find a paradigm flexible enough to accommodate the
expansion. This is what the MoQ promises but has so far failed to deliver.

A final point that needs to be addressed if all too briefly is dmb's rant on
scientific materialism. Again he argues against it from a romantically
esthetic position not a metaphysical one. But the term materialism is really
the point of contention. Materialism implies material substance of the sort
imagined first by Democritus, that of all matter being reducible to itty
bitty BBs in the void. Even as a mere description no one holds this view any
more. The "material" world is composed of energy and fields, sometimes bound
up as particles and sometimes flowing like waves. If the argument were
against matter as particulate substance then few would argue against it.

The real polarity at issue here is between naturalism and supernaturalism.
We have a host of supernaturalists in this crew. Ham is the most obvious but
Platt is clearly sympathetic. When dmb attempts to argue that James and
Dewey are using radical empiricism to allow the supernatural in through the
back door he is joining them. Claiming for example that mysticism or the
perennial philosophy allows for experiences that are not dependant on the
natural processes occurring in the nervous system is balderdash. It does an
injustice to James and Dewey and opens the door to a magical world where
butt monkeys rule.

The first assumption of scientific naturalism is that the world contains
order or static patterns. Whether those are stabile patterns of real forces,
energy and particles or whether they are stabile patterns of ideas is a
semantic distinction. It is the search for the proper way to encode our
experience. But to claim that the MoQ opposes this is misunderstand both
science and the MoQ.