[MD] MOQ levels

[skutvik at online.no]

Dear Steve.

February 8: 

Bo earlier (on Pirsig's letter):
> >Well, what's your conclusion? Doesn't it look as if the SOL 
> >interpretation is behind Pirsig's MOQ. I mean something to be 
> >deduced from it? 

Steve:
> I have no problem with the definition of the intellectual level as
> patterns of value recognized as manipulations of abstract patterns of
> experience......

Look, when a dog dreams about chasing cats (as we may conclude it  
does when asleep and twitching its legs) it surely "manipulates former 
experience" (memory). That this is "abstract" is intellect's S/O 
judgement, the dog does not know that it's dreaming.  

The point  is that we don't conclude that the dog is at the intellectual 
level, do we? The social level adopted this biological capability, but nor 
at this level did the it dawn on humankind that dreams, thinking (silent 
language) or spoken takes place is abstract and takes place in mind, 
this knowledge is intellect's value. 

Steve ctd:
> These abstract patterns of experinence may be referred to as mental
> objects and they are manipulated by a subject so in this sense you can
> think of intellect as S/O, but it seems that you want to take it
> further and say that the fourth level is SOM. 

Yes, from intellect seen they are mental, abstract, subjective ...etc. in 
contrast to the corporeal, concrete, objective halves, but - as told - 
neither the biological nor the social level knew this distinction, only at 
the intellectual level did the enormous  VALUE of this distinction arrive. 
I can't fathom how you can questioned this obvious fact ... if not from 
sheer spite.

> You add an M for "metaphysics." To me SOM is recognized as making
> subjective/objective knowledge distinctions which I do not see as the
> foundation of the fourth level. Metaphysics is philosophy. It is
> thinking about thinking. Some people never do this, but all people
> (except severely disabled people) participate in intellectual patterns. 

"Metaphysics is thinking about thinking" you say. I maintain that 
intellect is the distinction between thinking and the object of thinking", 
the latter not necessarily physical and may well be other people's 
thinking, or one's own previous thoughts, and if these thoughts 
are/were metaphysical the result is metaphysics. However you don't 
need to be disabled to blur the S/O distinction, religious devoted 
people don't look upon the holy texts as  "metaphysics" but Gods 
commandments.   

> I also don't think making the MOQ it's own meta-level makes any sense. 

You drive me nuts with this. The reality that makes you see things in a 
particular way is never part of that reality. Newton's Physics (which 
includes Gravity) isn't influenced by gravity. Give reason a chance!   

> You have to do this because you define the intellectual level not just
> as S/O but as SOM, 

I DO define the intellectual level as the S/O distinction, but add that it 
is a static level (i.e. blind to the value context) and believe that the S/O 
distinction is reality itself. The social level does not know the said 
context even if there's a lot of thinking going on so why should 
intellect? 


> so the MOQ being a new metaphysics must stand outside. But I see no
> problem putting anyone's intellectual patterns in the intellectual
> level regardless of the content because the intellectual level is just
> a type of pattern, not a metaphysics. Metaphysics is a subset of
> intellect. 

Had I just known what you deem "intellectual patterns", here it sounds 
like a mind that can have various contents, and this even Pirsig has 
refuted. "Metaphysics" is a concept invented by SOM's instigator 
Aristotle and is supposed to mean the deepest possible theory ABOUT 
reality, meaning that such subjective theorizing don't have the least 
influence on objective reality. The MOQ definition of metaphysics is as 
Pirsig says in LILA (before he went on to denounce it) that no-one can 
avoid metaphysics, meaning that their explanation of reality is reality 
itself.      

IMO

Bo