[MD] The China Syndrome

[skutvik at online.no]

Andrè 

On 18 Oct. you commented my post to Marsha 

Bodvar before:
> > You would not expect Pirsig to use the word "SOL" or say out loud that
> > "Bodvar is right"? This is as close as he could get. What "much before"
> > means I don't know, but "Ancient Greeks" spells SOM in a MOQ context.
> > Ipso facto! That he went on to the symbol manipulation definition does
> > not bother me, all who have the least inkling of the MOQ will see
> > through this as mere procrastinating. Also the asterisk regarding the
> > Oriental Intellect ... at least if we speak about the level and not
> > SOM's "intellect". Thanks for reading my boorish posts

Andre:
> Bodvar, your posts are not boorish! but I have gathered that you cling
> to an idea and want to see this idea confirmed and proven time and
> time again. Nothing wrong with that. I told you that we are going to
> have "our' little tussles as well.

Yours is the first review/criticism (of the SOL) and thereby of the MOQ 
from an understanding of what's at stake.  

> What Pirsig is saying about the intellectual level not extending "much
> before the Ancient Greeks" I think that what he is suggesting is that
> there is a difference between "thinking about" (call it
> "intellectualising" but to make the difference please keep the
> difference in mind) and making sense of the inorganic/organic/ natural
> world as it was understood in pre- Greek times (the world of Phaedrus
> and its rhetoric, having given rise to opposing points of view .. ie
> the Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists vs the 'decadence of the
> Sophists', ZMM p 368) in a rhetorical frame of mind as opposed to 
> development of the dialectical (SOM) which happened "with" the Ancient
> Greeks. 
 
I would have dropped all ways of "thinking" (conveys SOM's about the 
world existing in our minds) the social-intellectual transition was  from 
one of where mankind and gods intermingled (terribly compressed) to 
one of an objective, amoral, natural world that man (the subject) can 
observe and find the workings (natural laws) of.

Pirsig identifying the Sophists  with his own cause is also a little 
misleading. SOM's (Intellect's) split  began from the very outset with 
Anaxagoras who said that it (the principle) was "nous" (mind) and the 
cosmologists who said it was "in the world around them". Socrates and 
Plato were the crowning of the cosmologist movement (what would 
become objectivism) while the Sophists'  "man the measure" was what 
would become subjectivism, not a defense of the ancient Homeric 
Aretê of a couple of thousand years before. The Sophists surely spoke 
about "aretê" but has the Greeks done always.       

> Now, to make sense of this I again refer to the point I am trying to
> make in my previous post: the rhetorical side of intellect is firmly
> grounded in experience, that's why Phaedrus was so attracted by it.
> This is the period "before the Ancient Greeks". Pirsig's Intellectual
> level is not from before the Greeks, it finds its birth with the
> Greeks, especially with Aristotle...i.e. the start of abstractions and
> subdivisions of these abstractions...Aristotelian
> ethics,...definitions, logic,...forms,...rhetoric,...laughter
> ..ha-ha,ha-ha. 

Right, SOM or Intellect reached a sort of maturing with Aristotle's 
"form/substance" about which Pirsig says that the modern scientific 
attitude was born.  

> Today it includes math, logic and whatever other high abstract stuff 
> that can be understood only with the aid of mathematical/logical
> paradigms etc etc. all firmly based in SOM and that is where you,
> Bodvar are correct, Pirsig's intellect is SOL, 

Good!

> but...he suggested that the 'true' intellect should comprise the
> incorporation of rhetorical values. I.e an expansion of SOM. 

Hmm,  I'm not sure I get this. At least Pirsig never touched the Sophist 
issue in LILA, it became "experience". 

> The expansion begins in ZMM and is developed in Lila and then the
> balloon deflates. SOM superimposed on the levels?? Thinking about this 
> I think this is not what Pirsig intended (again presumptious!). He
> constantly talks about an expansion of SOM within his own development
> of the MoQ...it encapsulates/incorporates/supersedes SOM. That's why. 
 
This was a bit subtle too, but also SOM is left in LILA, it became 
"science and knowledge" that has made intellect forget its social roots.  

> Am I making sense? 

Lots of.

Bodvar