[MD] Trance state

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Bo,


> Steve:
>> In the MOQ, a metaphysics is not an object or a subject. It is an idea
>> or collection of ideas. It is an intellectual pattern of value. It is
>> not distinct from reality. It is part of the reality it describes. If
>> it couldn't describe itself, it wouldn't be much of a metaphysics.
>

Bo:
> I agree with Ian. With SOM the term "metaphysics" as the most basic
> understanding of reality was born. In other words SOM began as the
> attitude that we are able to understand the workings of reality. This 
> is
> the "cosmologist" (objectivity) but along with it subjectivity  
> immediately
> came into existence (the Sophists). And ever since the S and the O
> has been involved in a see-saw play: .
>

Steve:
Pirsig uses the word metaphysics from the pragmatist's perspective. He 
postulates that reality is Quality based on radical empiricism, but 
beyond that he does not claim to that he is describing how things 
actually are. That is an SOM game that he refuses to play:
"But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it 
becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one 
doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest 
quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if 
the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken 
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can 
then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings 
in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the 
"real" painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of 
value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we 
can perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so 
is, in part, the result of our history and current patterns of values. 
Or, using another analogy, saying that a Metaphysics of Quality is 
false and a subject-object metaphysics is true is like saying that 
rectangular coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false. 


> Steve's "In the MOQ, a metaphysics is not an object or a subject"
> brings "metaphysics" out of SOM-land, but then to say that "...it is a
> collection of ideas" brings it back again and "..it is not distinct 
> from
> reality" retrieves it. It's like LILA that starts with the correct Q 
> view of
> metaphysics as reality itself "No one living in an ordered universe is
> outside metaphysics", but then switches to  reality as the objective 
> part
> and metaphysics (the MOQ included) the subjective part   .. and SOM
> rules the waves.
>
Steve:
How is recognizing that Pirsig's work is a set of ideas a regression 
into SOM? What else is Pirsig's body of work supposed to be?

Pirsig doesn't play "subjective/objective" in the ontological sense, 
ever. Drawing distinctions about experience and intellectual 
descriptions of experience is not subjective/objective. It is merely 
the recognition that such intellectual descriptions are a part but not 
the whole of experience. Ideas need to cohere with other ideas and with 
other experience. Saying so does not mean that any of that is 
subjective or objective. It is just experience with no subjects or 
objects presupposed.

Best,
Steve