[MD] Some historical perspective

[plattholden at gmail.com]

Hi Bo, 

Speaking of Pirsig's "ambiguity" you may recall this exchange in Lila's 
Child::

Platt: "So, I fully agree with Bo's insight the SOM and the intellectual 
level are one and the same. To support it, to protect it, to avoid losing it 
and sinking back to the 'anything goes' of irrationalism, or a 'because 
God says so' mentality, we need to recognize its vulnerability to attacks 
from academic philosophers, social dogooders, spiritual evangelists, 
and its own internal paradoxes. To this end, the MOQ is the best S/O 
answer I've found yet."

Pirsig: Note 133. "I think this conclusion undermines the MOQ, although 
that is obviously not Platt's intention.  It is like saying that science is 
really a form of religion.  There is some truth to that, but it has the effect 
dismissing science as really not very important.    The MOQ is in  
opposition to subject-object metaphysics.  To say that it is a part of that 
system  which it opposes sounds like a dismissal.  I have read that the 
MOQ is the same as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, James, Pierce, 
Nieztsche, Bergson, and many others even though these people are not  
held to be saying the same as each other.  This kind of comparison is 
what I have meant by the term, "philosophology." It is done by people 
who are not seeking to understand what is written but only to classify it 
so that they don't have to see it as any thing new.  God knows, the MOQ 
has never had two better friends than Bo and Platt, so this is no criticism 
of their otherwise brilliant thinking.  It's just that I see a lowering of the 
quality of the MOQ itself if you follow this path of subordinating it to that 
which it opposes."

I think Pirsig is pleading for "understanding" of the MOQ even though by 
necessity it is presented in S/O intellectual (rational) ) language that 
cannot convey its full meaning. He would have been less ambiguous if 
he had simply said, as you do, that the intellectual level is occupied by 
subject/object metaphysics while his Quality metaphysics reveals a 
reality that comes before intellect and so can only partially be expressed 
in S/O language. Had he clearly limited his "intellectual level" to 
subject/object metaphysics,  the uniqueness of the MOQ would have 
been communicated more strongly and its "understanding" less obscure. 
In short, to understand the MOQ you have to escape the intellectual box 
of me-in-here, you-out-there. 

As I indicated, by "locking" the beneficial aspects of S/O intellect in its 
own level, it gets protected against the constant onslaught of social 
values, just as the social level protects against the onslaught of 
biological values (lately with less and less success). Likewise by making 
it clear that S/O metaphysics is locked into the intellectual level, the 
MOQ is freed up to soar into new, more revealing meanings of reality. 
Just as mathematics escaped from total dependence on physical units 
(six sheep, 40 centavos, etc.) the MOQ has escaped from total 
dependence on the subject/object division -- to the benefit of all. 

Platt      




On 17 Oct 2009 at 10:53, skutvik at online.no wrote:

> Platt, All 
> 
> Oct 13. you wrote: 
> 
> > An essay about Einstein, Oppenheimer and the rise and fall of nuclear
> > physics in popularity among media elites contains a passage which puts our
> > present discussions about the reality of subjects and objects in
> > historical perspective:
> 
> This from Bertrand Russell on Einstein, Gödel and Pauli reminds me 
> of our MOQ Discuss, particularly about the problem of arriving at 
> common premises. 
> 
>     These discussions were in some ways disappointing, for, 
>     although all three of them were Jews and exiles and, in 
>     intention, cosmopolitans, I found that they all had a German 
>     bias towards metaphysics, and in spite of our utmost 
>     endeavors we never arrived at common premises from which 
>     to argue.  
> 
> IMO the most weighty quote was this
> 
>     Meanwhile, there remains philosophical work to be done. The 
>     questions concerning technology that tormented 
>     Oppenheimer, and the yearning for a philosophical resolution 
>     of them, were not the imagined anxieties of a neurotic 
>     individual but a sensitive manTMs reflection of perplexities that 
>     run deep in American culture, sometimes shaping public 
>     policy. In short, America needs a philosophy that is capable of 
>     contextualizing the scientific adventure satisfyingly within the 
>     American spirit.  
> 
> A bit US-centered, I would say that all the world need a philosophical 
> resolution and that the MOQ is the resolution, but Pirsig's ambiguity 
> and the resulting ability to come to an agreement hinders its  
> application. And the intellectual level is and remains what all hinges 
> on. The way Dr McWatt presents it (intellect) in in his treatise  
> removes the revolutionary Quality from the MOQ.  
> 
> Platt:
> > "As an example of the interdisciplinary and highly philosophical tone
> > of Göttingen in the 1920s, Robert Jungk thus describes Born´s weekly
> > "Seminar on Matter": 
> 
>      "These debates were concerned more and more with the 
>     most basic problems of epistemology. Had the discoveries of 
>     atomic physics abolished the duality between the human 
>     observer and the world observed? Was there no longer any 
>     real distinction between subject and object? Could two 
>     mutually exclusive propositions on the same topic both be 
>     regarded as correct from a loftier standpoint? Would one be 
>     justified in abandoning the view that the foundation of physics 
>     is the close connection of cause and effect? But in that case 
>     could there ever be any such thing as laws of Nature? Could 
>     any reliable scientific forecasts ever be made?"  
> 
> "No longer any real distinction between subject and object". Phew, 
> that's the point. The intellectual level IS the S/O distinction, while it's 
> static "rank" means that this distinction doe not go further down than 
> the social level, the "real" distinction is the Dynamic/Static one. The 
> MOQ resolves it all in its gigantic metaphysical in-out-turn It's a bit 
> too much to call Jung, Born (Bohr?) Einstein - the lot - SOMists, but 
> all who don't know the MOQ are SOMists (exception for the Orientals 
> but they don't know they have transcended it) 
> 
> But, the problem is that most people don't understand the initial in-
> out-turn, they want it presented in some arm-long article by a 
> physicist with as many titles and by Quantum Physics terminology. 
> The madman from an obscure school in MOntana who now lives  
> even more obscurely in New Hampshire is not convincing and a 
> discussion that has as many opinions on the fundamentals as 
> participants does not help.   
>