[MD] The percolating SOL

[skutvik at online.no]

Dear Dave. 

Study this.  I don't need any off-the-cuff answer

24 Aug.:

Bodvar said:
> > As long as the MOQ is seen as an intellectual pattern (instead of
> > intellect a MOQ level) SOM is alive. Intellect remains a mental,
> > mindish realm where ideas reside, SOM one idea, the MOQ another idea,
> > allegedly a good idea, but nevertheless a subjective CONCEPT different
> > from the objective world "out there"  ... and SOM prevails. 

[AND THEN
> > I wish you would extract the meaning of this [PIRSIG QUOTE]
> > and tell how it contradicts my passage above. Much obliged.

dmb says:
> Since you equate SOM with intellect (a conclusion you use as a
> premise), any thought, idea, concept or analysis is automatically
> taken to be SOM. 

Hold it, this YOUR problem. To you "intellect" means any thought, 
idea, concept or analysis .. etc., consequently any creature using its 
intelligence (even "my" crow that figured out how to reach the food 
must necessarily use wordless thinking) is at the intellectual level ... 
no?  LILA created this problem by shifting from ZAMM's original 
"intellect=SOM to the mind-intellect and the SOL merely returns to the 
original premises. It's plain that the way ZAMM presents SOM, it's not 
the emergence of thinking  - of intelligence -  but of  intellectual 
thinking. That of distinguishing between what is objectively true and 
what mankind merely believe in.            

> The quotes I provided show that this is not at all what Pirsig has in
> mind. 

What's "this"? Your faulty presentation of my position.

> According to his own description, Pirsig solves the SOM dilemma with
> the intellect.

Never heard of any SOM-Intellect dilemma. The dilemma in ZAMM 
was whether Quality was objective or subjective and P. resolved this 
by turnig the metaphysical tables; postulating that SOM or intellect was 
Quality's first fall-out. Pre-intellectual/intellectual!!!!.   

> He says subjects and objects are "deduced", refutes it
> by saying there is "no logical justification", cuts it down to size
> with his analytic knife and when he gets rid of the mistaken
> presumptions behind SOM he describes it as a "culmination of thought".

Sure, by relegating subjects and objects (that previously were reality 
itself) the role of its 4th. level the MOQ cuts them down to size. All 
static patterns are "cutting to size". Static inorganic patterns of value is 
cutting "substance" down to size. 

> I think it's more than obvious that these deductions, logical
> justifications, this analysis and culmination of thought are part of
> the intellectual level, can only be accomplished by the intellect. You
> should be able to understand that based on explanations like this one
> from the end of chapter 19: 

Part of?  What "occupied" the intellectual level before SOM?  
 
> "The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from
> the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and
> objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the
> Quality! 

Exactly, this is the initial in-out-turn of the metaphysical sock where he 
understands that S/O is Quality's "intellectual" fall-out 

> Now he had that whole damned evil dilemma by the throat. The dilemma
> all the time had this unseen vile presumption in it, for which there
> was no logical justification, that Quality was the effect of subjects
> and objects. It was not! He brought out his knife. "The sun of
> quality," he wrote, "does not revolve around the subjects and objects
> of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not
> subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are
> subordinate to it! And at that point, when he wrote that, he knew he
> had reached some kind of culmination of thought he had been
> unconsciously striving for over a long period of time." 

I join Phaedrus unconditionally here, but why did Pirsig let go of SOM's 
"throat" by the impossible 4th.level he created in LILA? 

dmb continues:
> I'd also point out that your claim (that the MOQ can't be another idea
> because that would make it a "subjective CONCEPT different from the
> objective world "out there") makes no sense because the MOQ says that
> "the objective world 'out there'" is itself a concept, a deduction, a
> presumption etc..

What's NOT a concept by this logic?. Even your saying so is 
conceptual. There's noting about any Quality/Concept distinction in 
ZAMM, this is the disastrous Jamesian connection that made him let 
go of SOM's throat.   

> I've already explained this to you many times but
> your response is always the same. If one thinks about anything or
> analyzes anything or has any concept whatsoever, then one is trapped
> in SOM, you say. 

My position is that INTELLIGENCE (the biological apparatus of 
memory, retrieval and manipulation thereof. AKA "thinking" first by 
non-verbal means, culminating with the human neo-cortex brain) was 
first adopted by the social level (where "thinking" became verbal) then 
by intellect who performed the sly trick of making thinking itself = 
intellect. This bluff you seemingly are unable of calling.

> This trap then makes reasonable philosophical conversations impossible.
> In fact, I'm only answering your question for the benefit of readers
> other than you. 

OK, the academical (reasonable) "philosophical discussion" was what 
Phaedrus knew is the block to understand the MOQ.

Bodvar   


PS
How can a guy unable to weed out the "long line" bug out of his 
messages, be trusted to understand the MOQ? Not even willing to ask 
someone's help. You don't live alone out on the prairie?