[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[skutvik at online.no]

Horse 

20 Feb. you wrote:

> Hi Bo Perhaps I missed it in my reading of Pirsig's letter to Paul
> Turner ( http://moq.org/forum/Pirsig/LetterFromRMPSept2003.html ) but I
> don't see anything to support your claim. In fact what I do see is an
> outright rejection of your position: 

My position is that the previous SOM (minus the "M")  necessarily 
must become MOQ's 4th. intellectual level (for it to have its alleged 
explanatory power) and this was finally affirmed by Pirsig in the said 
letter with him saying that it's no purpose in speaking about an 
intellectual level before the Greeks -  that "the Greeks" spells SOM in 
a MOQ context we all know. OK? 

    "The argument that the MOQ is not an intellectual formulation 
    but some kind of other level is not clear to me. There is 
    nothing in the MOQ that I know of that leads to this 
    conclusion." Robert Pirsig to Paul Turner ( 
    http://moq.org/forum/Pirsig/LetterFromRMPSept2003.html )  

But if the 4th. level is SOM then it follows that the MOQ can't be a 
SOM pattern, how dense can anyone be to claim that the MOQ is a 
subsystem of a subsystem of its own system. It violates the container 
logic that Pirsig stressed so vehemently and every logical rule there 
are.     

> So where in the letter does Pirsig do as you say and come within a
> 'hairs breadth' of your (incorrect) position?

In saying that the Egyptians in spite of their INTELLIGENCE had not 
entered the INTELLECTUAL level and that only with the Greeks did 
this transition happen ... on the Western hemisphere that is, the 
Oriental "intellect" is accounted for. The "hair's breadth" was his 
saying "not much before the Ancient Greeks", he had to leave that  
margin for obvious reasons.    

Bodvar


PS