[MD] The resolution of the mind/matter platypus.

[skutvik at online.no]

Mark Squonk 

I had posed these two alternatives:
 
> The intellectual level is either 1) SOM or 2) what SOM means by
> "intellect", namely the mental compartment called "mind" where
> concepts - ideas - thoughts .. are formulated and stored. 

Squonk (Oct.26): 
> I think you know this is wrong. 'Mind' in the moq?includes both Social
> and Intellectual patterns. While?spov and ipov?employ symbols there is
> a distinction between Social symbols and Intellectual symbols: Social
> symbols are imitated while Intellectual symbols are abstracted from
> symbols that had been previously imitated. 

In LILA Pirsig suggests that the social and intellectual levels are 
"subjective", and he also shows how SOM's monster platypus - the 
mind/matter one - is resolved in light of the said 
"inorg.+bio=objective/socio+ intell.=subjective" system. 

NB!
I'm away from the computer where I have LILA as well as the book so 
I can't quote it correctly, but as a MOQ scholar you know the passage:

I don't like ridicule, but this soon turns sour. He says that two levels 
are missing between matter and mind - meaning the bio. and socio - 
but he spends much time earlier on to show that the inorganic level 
doesn't corresponds to SOM's "matter" and if so the intellectual does 
not correspond to SOM's "mind".

 OK, you say that "mind" (in the MOQ) includes society and intellect 
(meaning they are are "subjective") but the M/M platypus consists of 
how thoughts interacts with the body. I may think of moving a finger, 
but as long as the thought remains in my mind the the finger is still, 
but then I decide to move it and the thought becomes a physical act. 
The body belongs to the "objective-matterish" part of the static 
hierarchy (in Pirsig's system) but I can't see how the the social and 
intellectual "aggregate" resolves this, the gap to be jumped is now 
between society and biology. 

I guess you know the SOL-ution, but I may elaborate if needed.

Bodvar