[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[skutvik at online.no]

Marsha and Steve

28 Nov. Marsha cited Steve's:

> >Let's apply the pragmatic maxim here .... snip

and said:
 
> I still do not understand Bo's problem.  As I've said when all are
> seen as interrelated and interconnected static patterns of value, the
> subject/object problem dissolves.  (At least in theory, in practice
> old habits are a bit difficult to break.)   And I've always had a
> problem with an upper DQ/sq level.  DQ should not be confined in any
> visual way.  It certainly should not be confined to a level.  Bo's
> tenaciousness is remarkable, but has convinced me of nothing.

We may have our personal takes of Pirsig's ideas, but if the level 
aspect of it is valid everything is NOT interrelated/interconnected - not 
at the pragmatic plane that Steve points to. You may be a Buddhist 
and feel all right with such "wisdom" but as Westerns steeped in SOM 
(what becomes the 4th. level in the MOQ) we demand an objective 
approach to things  and are - likewise - bound to deem your approach 
as woolly nonsense.   

Then to the rest of Steve's

> What are the consequences of seeing the MOQ as an intellectual pattern
> that is superior to the intellectual pattern known as SOM .....

The consequence of seeing the MOQ as an intellectual pattern 
superior to another intellectual pattern called SOM is that the 
intellectual level isn't static - meaning not having any characteristic 
other than being a realm where "mental processing of symbols" takes 
place and the result of this processing  - ideas - are stored. And this 
realm is indistinguishable from SOM's subjective realm called "mind".    

> as opposed to seeing all of intellect as SOM (IOW Pirsig's MOQ) ...

After going through Steve's distortion machine .. phew! Intellect as 
SOM is fine, but "IOW Pirsig's MOQ" is nonsense. Intellect is a MOQ 
sub-set and can't contain the MOQ.     

> ... and the MOQ as a single pattern forming it's own new level (IOW Bo
> and Platt's revised SOLAQI MOQ)? 

There was a time when I called the MOQ a 5th. level, but that's left 
long ago. Still that of intellect a sub-set of the Quality system and thus 
incapable of containing the system itself stands tall, Pirsig is the one 
that uses it, and after all the MOQ is a metaphysics and supposed to 
be above itself. Logic is not suspended.   

This about a system's relationship to itself is important. In lesser 
systems (if the problem ever comes up) for instance General Relativity 
SOM relegates it to Einstein's mind and to the mind of those who learn 
it. And I'm afraid this is what Pirsig in LILA's diluted intellectual level 
also does. The MOQ is an idea located at the intellectual level 
because this had become "mind" (not as Phaedrus envisaged it: as 
SOM) However the MOQ is supposed to replace SOM and has no 
more mind than it has substance.         

Anyway thanks Steve for understanding what's at stake

Bo