[MD] Some historical perspective

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Platt 

On 17 Oct. u wrote:

> 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."

I remember your input Platt, a few comments may (have been) 
needed to align it with "latter day" understanding, but never mind.

    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 .....

I'm a little uneasy with both Pirsig's and your own approach. The 
MOQ performs its in-out-turn by the initial Reality=DQ/SQ  axiom, 
from then on its static levels don't corresponds to anything in the 
SOM world. Inorganic patterns aren't "matter", intellectual patterns 
aren't ideas. Intellectual value is the value of Objectivity over 
Subjectivity, of Reason over Emotions. And I do not say that that "the 
intellectual level is occupied by anything IT IS THE SOM!

> ....while his Quality metaphysics reveals a reality that comes before
> intellect and so can only partially be expressed in S/O language. 

OK, good, here you say it, the Quality Reality is established from the 
outset - with the MOQ. Regarding language I don't think a "newspeak" 
is necessary, it will soon adapt to the Dynamic/Static outlook.      

> 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. 

Yes, but much confusion emerged from Pirsig's (vain) effort to make 
the SOM/MOQ transition something that occurred at "intellect".and 
that the MOQ merely is an intellectual pattern - an IDEA - because 
that's back to the premises the MOQ opposes. When you in the LC 
exchange says ....

"To this end, the MOQ is the best S/O answer I've found yet." 

Pirsig obviously mis-understood it as MOQ being S/O-patterned and 
thus undermining it all, but you are right, the MOQ is "out of SOM" 
(out of intellect) and had to be presented in an academical - objective 
- style to be taken seriously. The fact that it turns SOM-as-academy 
into a subset of his own will not be discovered before it's too late - a 
"fait accompli" ;-).

> 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. 
 
Again, the "locked into" sound odd to me, SOM is MOQ's 4th. level, 
all of it, every last bit. The MOQ is the reality wherein all this takes 
place 

IMO

Bodvar






  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 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.   
> > 
> 
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