[MD] Some historical perspective

[Joseph Maurer]

On 10/24/09 10:17 AM, "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip>
Historically speaking, if by "subject" Bo means a
self-conscious thinker and by "object" he means a
material thing, then Bo doesn't have a leg to stand on
in saying the Intellect is S/O and that it began in
Greece.
<snip>

Hi Matt and all,

Imho evolution is still in play in Bo¹s formulation.  As for beginning in
Greece, I accept the story of Adam and Eve with the apple which predates
Greece.

Consciousness at the social level evolves to a consciousness at an
intellectual level.  Unfortunately, an examination of evolution, accepted by
Pirsig, is a non-starter in conversations.  What can one say about a belief
not mathematically certified?

By continuing to evolve, consciousness reaches higher unlatched social and
higher unlatched intellectual levels by heroes like Pirsig in a
consciousness only evolution.  I am not aware of the further evolution to
the higher levels of heroes due to my habits of mechanical thought,
idealism. 

When I read Bo¹s position on the intellectual level I am amazed.  Imho
higher emotional and higher intellectual levels in consciousness only, are
available to everyone but only a few heroes manage to recognize and use
them.   

My computer can only reproduce something that has been conceptualized in
word form and translated to mathematical form.  My undefined perception
precedes the way I conceptualize reality.  This DQ perception remains very
tentative in that I might misrepresent to myself the motivations from
evolution for my actions, and I become mechanical.  The higher Social and
intellectual levels of consciousness are not mechanical but reside in the
consciousness of us all and manifest in heroes.

As Bo has pointed out about the Taliban, they make an abstraction of the
authority needed for a ruler to govern society.  They, then, misapply this
abstraction to an ideal creation, an all-powerful Allah.

This template of abstraction for knowing all of my behavior seems to be
mechanical in the presence of the faculty for abstraction. Abstractions
signal mechanical behavior. DQ/SQ evolution is denied.

Imho An acceptance of DQ, undefined, enables the possibility of an evolution
to a higher emotional, higher intellectual levels in DQ consciousness only.

Joe

> 
> 
>> Bo has long held the position that Intellect is equivalent Subject/Object
>> differentiation.
>> 
>> This is the subject of this thread: any thoughts regarding that in light of
>> your current thinking?
> 
> 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
> 
> Historically speaking, if by "subject" Bo means a
> self-conscious thinker and by "object" he means a
> material thing, 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, 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.
> 
> 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).  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.  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.  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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> I apologize for stumbling into the thread.  It doesn't seem
> very well marked for fidelity, and I apologize, but I hadn't
> really been following it.  I only saw that one post for
> some reason.
> 
> Matt
>  
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