[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Mary --


We haven't corresponded before, but I've read your posts and am impressed 
with some of the insights you bring to this forum.  FYI I'm not a 
"levelist", and the Quality hierarchy is not my cup of tea.  You might call 
me a "fundamentalist", if this label can be applied to metaphysics.

If you will indulge me, I'd like to focus on what you've been saying about 
epistemology -- specifically, the way you view the subject in an objective 
world.

On 4/4 you said:

> Here's the deal.  Everything I can think of, every single thought
> I am capable of having, is completely MIRED in Subject-Object
> Logic.  I have never had a single thought in which I was not a
> discrete entity in the thought relationship.  If I am thinking
> about any kind of mathematics, symbolic logic, or a computer
> program, everything about those thoughts is discrete.  X+2=5.
> Solve for X.  I am doing the solving for the quantity X which is
> outside of myself.  For that matter, so is the 2 and the 5 and the
> equals sign.  I am not at "one" with that mathematical equation.
> It represents discrete entities from "my" perspective, where I am
> also a discrete entity.

You stress a fundamental concept that is alien to the MoQ and, in my 
opinion, is lost on the Pirsigians; namely, the "discreteness" of existence. 
What you have called "Subject-Object Logic" (perhaps in deference to Bodvar) 
I call "differentiation".  It applies not only to subjects and objects but 
to the contrariety of time and space, being and nothingness, beginning and 
ending, good and evil, morality and immorality, and just about every 
existential process we experience.

> I challenge you to think of any "thing" or "situation"
> where this is not true.  I can conceptualize all sorts of things.
> I can even imagine what it would be like to achieve Eastern
> Nirvana - but who is doing the conceptualizing?  Who just
> achieved Nirvana?  Me.  I am totally mired in my static
> patterns.  I have hands and feet and my feet differ from the
> floor - they are not at one with the floor.  I am discrete,
> and discretion is the better part of valor (sorry, couldn't resist).
>
> We are all totally mired in Subject-Object Logic for every
> minute of every day everywhere.

This is a fundamental principle that gets lost in the "patterns" approach to 
epistemology which, in fact, is designed to eliminate subjects and objects. 
As a consequence, the MoQ places no value in the integrity of the 'self'. 
Instead, Selfness and Otherness are simply "interacting patterns" of 
Quality, while the cognitive aspects of subjectivity -- awareness, 
experience, feelings, intellect, conceptualization, etc. -- are relegated to 
some undefined cosmic stratum, leading to endless debate as to where they 
fit in the Quality hierarchy.

> Every metaphysics the West is founded upon, everything we
> think we believe, everything we do is based on this fundamental
> principle of DISCRETENESS.  I am different from you.  I am
> "in" the world, a part of the world, but I am not the world.
> This we believe in the West and all other Western metaphysics
> takes this as a given. It is not questioned.  It is not examined.
> The enormity of Zen and then Lila was when this one small
> voice, Robert M. Pirsig, sat at a typewriter and wrote down
> the idea that the Universe as we know it is not composed of
> subjects and objects - discrete things - but is composed of
> value and Quality.  Wow!
>
> If that puts Eastern Metaphysics outside the bounds of the
> Intellectual Level, then so be it.  So what?  I say that rather than
> "demoting" Eastern Buddhism or whatever to a "lower" level,
> what this implies is that the MoQ is on the SAME level as
> any Eastern Metaphysics that says essentially the same thing,
> and that BOTH are ABOVE the Intellectual Level.  Is there
> something wrong with that?  Is it a heresy in this group to admit
> that maybe Pirsig isn't the only one that's ever had this idea?

You're absolutely right, Mary, and I suspect your assertion will be 
vindicated here in short order.  However, my problem is with the concept of 
Quality (Value) in the absence of the subjective self.  If RMP has launched 
anything "new" is the annals of philosophy, it must lie in this concept.

> The thing that makes the whole construct of the MoQ WORK
> is the idea that sets of patterns only achieve the status of a Level
> when they cease to support the level they are in and go off to
> meet ends of their own.  Brilliant!
>
> So how does that tell us what the Intellectual Level is?
>
> Is it thinking itself?  The act of having thoughts.  Thoughts are used
> to enhance and support the Biological and Social AND Intellectual
> Levels.  Doesn't seem to meet the criteria unless you can say that
> thinking itself is now going off to meet ends of its own.  Maybe it is,
> but hasn't it always? If the levels evolved one from the other in the
> order presented, then you'd be hard pressed to argue that
> "thinking itself" is the Intellectual Level. We've been doing it all
> along.  Maybe it has more to do with a way of thinking. ...
>
> Society is built on discreteness.  The idea that we are unique
> individuals who come together to achieve common goals that
> may or may not support biological survival.  To argue that this
> differs in the East is a fallacy.  They too are descended from
> the same organisms in the mud as we and do not have different
> brain wiring than theirs.  The teachings of Buddha did not
> arise from the Biological Level, but were a reaction - an extremely
> insightful reaction - to the fundamental belief in discreteness that
> exists in all people everywhere.  If everyone in the East innately
> "gets" the idea that we are all one, all "Quality", then why did
> the Buddha have to suffer so much to convince people?
> Why doesn't everybody over there agree?  Why don't we?

Excellent reasoning, Mary.  I wonder what explanations it will elicit from 
the Pirsig acolytes.

Thanks for your contributions, Mary, and welcome aboard!

Ham