[MD] Some historical perspective

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Matt

24 Oct. 

Dr. Squonk I presume:
> > Bo has long held the position that Intellect is equivalent
> > Subject/Object differentiation.

Anyway that's right. The "differentiation" is the crux.

> > This is the subject of this thread: any thoughts regarding that in
> > light of your current thinking?

Most discussers shun this issue like the plague, so thanks for bringing 
it up.  

Matt:
> No.  Other than Bo isn't very good with history because he has a fairly
> small box everything has to fit into. I still think the same thing I
> did when I wrote this from a post series with Bo on this subject some
> years ago:
> http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/05/excavating-som.html 
 
I haven't read your blog, but will ... some day.

> Historically speaking, if by "subject" Bo means a self-conscious
> thinker and by "object" he means a material thing 

Listen Matt. My claim is that MOQ's intellectual level is identical to 
SOM, thus what it means by "subject-subjective" and "object-
objective" is what I mean. 

However, what SOM means by "intellect" is totally different by what 
the MOQ  means.    

> then Bo doesn't have a leg to stand on in saying the Intellect is S/O
> and that it began in Greece.  Plato was not a SOMist in this regard,
> and neither was Aristotle

I regard ZAMM's description of SOM's emergence the most 
convincing thesis I've ever read, and I would think you - as "afflicted" 
by Pirsig - also would find it convincing, but to (try to) reject the SOL 
you have to reject the MOQ fundamentals as well. Plato no SOMist! 
Where have you been? SOM began as the notion of something 
permanent beyond the (mythological) immortality of the gods. It's first 
manifestation was Socrates' "Appearance vs Truth" (Appearant= 
illusory/True=permanent) 

Plato developed SOM into a version where the world of sense 
impressions was the illusory part, with Ideas the permanent. The fact 
that "ideas" have become the illusory part (subjective) in the modern 
mind/matterish SOM means nothing, the SOM has gone through 
many stages of what is illusory and what is permanent, but the 
illusory/permanent configuration is - um - permanent.

With Aristotle SOM reached its Form/Substance stage, here Pirsig 
says the first outline of science can be spotted.         

> .......... and Descartes is generally considered to be fairly original
> on that point of dicing reality into res (Latin for "thing") cogitans
> and res extensa.  There are so many ambiguities in the area, in fact,
> that because Bo hasn't teased them out is a big reason why not many can
> understand the thesis, let alone get to the point where they think the
> thesis is a good idea (there are a few, of course).  It seems simple,
> but it's not. 

With Descartes SOM reached its modern mind/matter stage. 
Descartes may have thought both ("extensa" and "cogitans) equally 
real, but the fact is that SOM cannot live with it, one MUST be real 
(permanent) with the other irreal (illusory) and this S/O "see-saw" has 
gone up and down ever since.      

> While Bo takes relish in the fact that he thinks Pirsig went the wrong
> direction in Lila and he's steering the right course out of ZMM, I
> think it's pretty clear that Bo doesn't really get ZMM right either. 
> That's what the post is about.  It's seems clear to me that there is a
> steady movement backwards through time, chasing down the Ghost of
> Reason, from mid-century era philosophy of science (the problem of
> hypotheses), to 18th-century modern philosophy (S/O Dilemma), to
> Ancient Greece (rhetoric vs. dialectic).  

"Relish" is not the word, but I am disappointed with Pirsig's deviation 
from Phaedrus original idea of SOM=intellect which is what gives the 
MOQ its enormous explanatory power, while "orthodoxy" leaves it 
impotent.

> Pirsig was too historically conscious to think that every era or
> culture manifests the same difficulties just the same, and an
> overzealous reductionism just blots out the intricasies of the
> particular problems.  

Intricacies, yes, there has not been any lack of those, but the MOQ 
lets us see the forest beyond all in-tree-cacies. But some obviously 
loves the confusion.  

> Pirsig was doing a collage on a massive scale to try and find a
> pattern, but it is surely the wrong response to pull up the pattern
> from the collage, knock out a few pieces, encase it in lead, and hit
> everybody with it.  I don't know, maybe if it worked I'd feel
> differently, but the big fish Pirsig was after was Reason, and there's
> little reason to think in Pirsig, in ZMM or Lila, that that can easily
> be reduced to S/O differentiation. 

If Reason don't mean "objective-over-subjective" what the heck is it? 
Phaedrus of ZAMM wanted to "... give Reason a good trashing" 
because it was the SOM that blocked his Quality Idea.  

> And chucking what Pirsig thought, there's still little reason to think
> A) materialism--which has to be a main idea behind SOLAQI as I
> understand it--in its Greek variety is sufficiently like scientific
> reductionism, which is what the S/O Dilemma is about, and B) that the
> origins of thinking are not only latecoming, but restrictively simple
> in composition. 

Who's "chucking" what Pirsig thought? Anyway to try to cut through 
your intricacies, "... little reason to think materialism in its Greek 
variety is sufficiently like scientific reductionism". I think the Greek-
born SOM  very much gave rise to modern day science and its 
"reductionism" Descartes for instance reduced animals to 
automatons.  

> On the other hand, I haven't been following Bo's course over the last
> couple years.  So, I'm probably talking a bit out of school. 

You have a remarkable grasp of my position, but of course no one 
admits anything, my only "relish" is how easily the SOL shoots down 
all opposition.

Bodvar