[MD] SOL

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Marsha,

You mentioned that the only opinion you cared about with regard to Bo's 
SOL interpretation is RMP's. In fact, as Bo well knows, Pirsig did 
"rule" on the issue and not at all favorably to Bo's interpretation.

The following is from Lila's Child:

Bodvar:

Gentlemen! I must hasten to say that “rationality” wasn’t meant to 
replace static patterns

of intellect as the official name in the MOQ. The reason for 
introducing the term stems

from a thread in the early days of TLS when the evasiveness of this 
value dimension

dawned upon us. At first it was pinned down as thinking, mental 
activity, consciousness,

“mind” for short, but this really screws things up. The MOQ rejects 
mind/matter as the

fundamental division of reality so defining intellect as mind means 
lapsing back to the

SOM.

I long stuck to “Symbolic Language” (and still think it’s a good 
definition), but someone

caught the idea that intellect can be seen as rational thinking. Long 
before the Lila Squad

days, it had puzzled me greatly that Subject/Object metaphysics maybe 
viewed as the

intellectual level of MOQ! I even raised the question in a letter to 
Pirsig, but he did not

respond. [88]



Pirsig responded with this annotation:

88.     I don’t remember not responding, so it must have been an 
oversight. I don’t think the subject-object level is identical with 
intellect. Intellect is simply thinking, and one can think without 
involving the subject-object relationship. Computer language is not 
primarily structured into subjects and objects. Algebra has no subjects 
and objects.

Case closed? Of course Bo is welcome to come up with his own 
philosophy, but a subject/object level is clearly not what Pirsig means 
by the intellectual level in his MOQ. What do you think?

Best,
Steve