[MD] Natural Law

[skutvik at online.no]

John the village ....

30 July you wrote:

> omg, I can't believe I'm doing this...

What agonies I inflict on you. Really sorry. 

John originally:
> > > Here is why your formulation of SOM=intellect falls flat, Bo.
> > > Finding a base for morals in SOM is futile, because SOM is the
> > > metaphysical stance that there is no such thing as objective
> > > morality.  Its all subjective and relative.

Bo:
> > Right, but ALL static levels have put up a fierce resistance yet
> > been transcended by a new level (with DQ a midwife) so the MOQ
> > transcending intellect-as-SOM is DQ's last and final job, but also
> > the hardest.

John now:
> Bo, do you know how crazy that reply seems to me?  It must be the
> viking blood coming out.  Fierce resistance?  WHY?  What's the big
> resistance about?  Can't they be overcoming the lower level of
> existence, and growing toward the light like a flower in the
> sunshine?

No doubt it seems crazy, the MOQ is crazy from SOM (intellect's 
"immune system" at work) but when you don't even know or 
acknowledge its the most basic tenets, for instance the levels' 
struggle, i.e. the fierce resistance that the lower level put up ... etc. 
what are you doing here in the first place. 

"Growing toward the light like a flower in the sunshine? LOL! Read the 
part about "a professor left out in the sunshine" i.e. the impossible 
condition that inorganic value poses to life. No one can find a rational 
reason how life got started ... still, it's a fact.

>  Why all this fighting and resistance? Hang some friggin' daisies
> around your prow.  Lighten up here, man. I'm from California.  We don't
> do "norwegian dour'. 

OK, you are "harmless" one can't really blame kindergarten inmates 
for soiling their pants. 

> And DQ as a midwife, doesn't work.  What's the force then, Who is
> giving birth?  Do you know how little, a really good midwife even
> does?  Our last birth, our midwife popped her head in a couple times
> and cleaned up the mess afterward.  Kept guard at the door.  Is that
> the kind of metaphor you meant for DQ?

Then the midwife metaphor wasn't the best, maybe the role YOU 
played as inseminator is more apt ;-) 
 
> Last and hardest, "MoQ transcending intellect."  Tsk, tsk. Bo. 
> You're wearing your helmet upside down again.  MoQ is explicitly and
> definitely, a metaphysics.  A metaphysics is a philosophy, a set of
> ideas about reality. An intellectual construction, through and
> through.  If individuals can achieve realizations of their
> existence, using this metaphysics, then GREAT.  We have a good
> metaphysics.

OK, here is the crux, after intellect's or SOM's emergence the term 
"metaphysics" was coined by Aristotle and became "subjective 
theories about objective reality", but as Pirsig starts the MOQ he tries 
to give the term a much more fundamental meaning, namely REALITY 
ITSELF which is the true meaning. The remotest tribes in the 
innermost reaches of Amazonas - without any academies and 
philosophers all have a metaphysics in the latter sense, and that is the 
MOQ sense  

> > Intellect a tool, that's in SOM where the term "intellect" means
> > turning of mental wheels, but the MOQ's  4th. STATIC level is
> > nothing of the kind - it is SOM itself - and this "Copernican
> > revolution" is hard to grasp and makes an understanding of the MOQ
> > so difficult.
 
> SOM itself, is a metaphysical position that Subjects percieving Objects
> are all there really is.  It arose from a combination of philosophical
> developments that arose after the great disapointments in the great
> war, and were reinforced by a very narrow pragmatism which came into
> play after the continuation of that great war, WWII. SOM is the deeper
> underlying metaphysics of what could be termed "liberal humanism" that 
> dominated academia and govt and society since then.  SOM is the
> metaphysical position that values are subjective. The MoQ is the
> metaphysical position that value is ultimately transcendant of subject
> and object, and thus, in itself the ultimate object. Admittedly, that's
> my Idealistic interpretation of the MoQ, which is still in debate. 

With this unhealthy mis-mash of completely silly,  half-valid and a 
grains of valid notions I have no chance to reach you.  

> > The full static range must be completed before the MOQ can be
> > reached, it's impossible to go from the 3rd. level to the MOQ, but
> > on the other hand there is as much resistance from the 4th. level
> > to be transcended by the MOQ as there was (and still is) from the
> > social level to be transcended by the intellectual.

> Well, in your head at least.   (try that trick of wearing the helm
> right side up)

As said you are harmless, very village needs one.

Bodvar