[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, DMB, All.

8 Feb. 

DMB before,
> > But I don't think SOM can be equated with the intellectual level
> > because there are so many examples of the intellectual dismantling
> > of SOM. William James and John Dewey both explicitly attacked it a
> > hundred years ago. Hegel went after it 200 years ago. Rejecting SOM
> > is practically the definition of postmodernism. How can that happen
> > if intellect is SOM? As I see it, the philosophers that have
> > rejected SOM count as a whole pile of counterexamples. If intellect
> > and SOM were the same thing, Pirsig would not be able to write books
> > disputing it and we would not be able to understand any such book.
> > We'd be trapped with nowhere else to go. There'd be no possibility
> > of conceiving reality in any other terms, but this is already a
> > fact. Pirsig's books are exhibits "A" and "B" in the case against
> > it.

About Pirsig not able to write books and ourselves not able to 
understand them is the intelligence-intellect fallacy that haunts so 
much of LILA (not all though), but lets to see what Mary says. 

[Mary Replies]
> This is hard, and I probably won't do a very good job of explaining
> it, but let me put it like this.  Anybody can attack SOM, and books
> have definitely been written; but, what are those books and what are
> those attacks? 

Good, I only want to add: Did any of the mentioned  thinkers attack or 
dismantle SOM? I mean Pirsig's first breakthrough was that of 
identifying the mind/matter divide as something that had arrived at a 
time in history. If there were thinkers galore who had done that before 
him he would surely have referred to those. No, he only refers to 
Immanuel Kant who our know-all Matt Kundert agreed with me was 
SOM's "last word". Afterwards all have been footnotes to Kant. By the 
way Matt inadvertently affirmed the SOL thesis. He tries to disclaim it,  
but it's there in his essay. So, if I had my way "SOM" would be 
replaced by the 4th.intellectual level. At least they are interchangeable. 

> They are all expressed in terms of SOM. To attack SOM is for the
> subject (the attacker) to attack the object (SOM) which is perfectly
> valid as long as you realize that your still in SOM.  

If you say what I hope you say - namely that SOM made the human 
individual (before a social entity) into a subjective and all things 
external to the subject (before the world) became objects  - you are 
right, and this reality cannot be transcended unless - like young Pirsig 
did -  creating a something that the SOM is a fall-out of. And this none 
has done before Pirsig .  

> To write Lila is for the subject (Pirsig) to create an object (a book)
> about the subject of SOM.  Do you see what I mean here?  I'll let Bo
> speak for himself, but I think this is what he has meant all along.  

Pirsig started from SOM-land meaning that he took the S/O divide to 
be reality's ground and regarded himself a subjective mind surrounded 
by an objective matterish world. However his moorings in this reality 
grew weaker as ZAMM's reasoning progressed and when it ended 
with the "in-out-turn of the metaphysical sock"  - claiming that SOM 
was Quality's "intellectual" creation - his perspective had shifted  to 
MOQ-land. 

>From this new perspective one would expect that's the full-fledged 
MOQ would continued with the intellectual level = SOM, but in LILA the 
intellectual level had changed into something more vague. For a long 
time I thought that Pirsig (not being sure if anyone would would 
understand or send him back to the hospital) had launched this 
watered-down version as a test balloon, but once anyone saw the SOL 
context he (Pirsig) would cut the umbilical string to SOM and let the 
true MOQ take off on its own. 

But no, it looked like the 4th. level was meant to be something more 
like SOM's "mind" - the subjective horn he had rejected - and ever 
since the MOQ has been in limbo without any explanatory power. In 
"Lila's Child" he repeated the rejection of the SOL and launched some 
outrageous "annotations" that even DMB protested while he still was 
"with us" . But finally - in the PT letter - Pirsig  admitted that the 4th. 
level was a problem and almost affirmed the SOL, while at the same 
time re-forwarded LC's even more impossible definition, and also a 
non-S/O "oriental intellect".     

Mary continued:
> know it's what I mean when I say that the Intellectual Level is totally
> steeped in SOM and cannot transcend it.  I am incapable of thinking of
> anything - of forming any thought about anything - that is not me (the
> subject) thinking about something (the object).  
 
Correct. The intellectual level is the S/O distinction (SOM minus the 
"M") and moreover it is static, meaning it can't change. However, all 
levels are/were static and transcending them just as unlikely - 
remember the unlikeliness of life out of matter - yet, nevertheless it 
happened. Now, we are on thin ice, the MOQ is no static level, yet 
there is some level-like relationship between SOM-as-intellect and the 
MOQ and the thing to understand is that intelligence - that have served 
the levels in succession - will serve the MOQ in the future, no need  for 
leaving thinking behind.    

> That's why it's impossible to discuss DQ; why Pirsig said (somewhere
> in Lila) that it was impossible to define Dynamic Quality because to
> formulate a metaphysics was a corruption of the metaphysics you are
> forming.  I'll find the quote if needed. 

No need to dig up the quote, but here I protest seriously. The MOQ 
says that DQ is indefinable, isn't that enough? Must we cook up a yet 
more dynamic Quality than MOQ's DQ?  If the Quality/MOQ met-
metaphysics overrides the MOQ, goodbye all sensible discussions we 
may just stand on one foot and gaze into the sun.  

> I think somebody posted it recently, in fact.  I think it's what he
> means when he says the Intellectual Level is "thinking itself". 
> Basically, I think the only way to transcend SOM is to enter some
> higher plain which I have never personally been to.  Perhaps something
> akin to what Marsha talks about when discussing her moments of "pure
> experience". 

Pirsig (if it's him you refer to?)  began with the "intellectual = mind" (in 
a letter to Anthony) , then Lila Child's "manipulation of symbols" 
repeated in the Paul Turner letter, simultaneously with saying there 
being no such level before the Greeks (i.e. confirming the SOL).To 
transcend SOM-as-intellect one must truly enter some higher plain 
(plane?) but that is not the least mystical  The MOQ is a Western 
"Buddhism"  where the way to  enlightenment is clearly charted thanks 
to the Dynamic/Static Buddha lay-out and the static Buddha levels that 
ends in the MOQ in a perfectly closed circle..   

Bodvar

PS for Mary
Can't you educate DMB how to cut the line length at some reasonable 
point , it's not just him  but when people answer his post his "long-
liners" infects their posts too and I have to open them in "reply mode" 
to read.