[MD] What is Zen?

[Mary]

Hello DMB,

I find this such an extraordinarily strange post.  Mainly because I have no
idea who you believe yourself to be arguing with, or what, in fact, you are
arguing about.  The quotes provided are all in complete accord with Pirsig
and (at least) with myself and Bo right up to the point where Pirsig takes
the mental leap of turning the metaphysical sock inside out.  Perhaps these
others even go on later to do that, though it's not quoted here, by
declaring Quality to have subjects and objects and not the other way around,
but I suspect not.  That's Ok, since as I have said before, all of these
other philosophers can be viewed as 'Proto-Pirsigians'.  What they do
certainly agree with Pirsig, myself and Bo about is the paradox of a
subject-object Universe, and that is an excellent step, so bully for them!
Why is it so (apparently) difficult for you to see that we have no
disagreement?  Would you like to explain what you are really upset about?

If this is intended to set Bo or any of us 'straight' you are preaching to
the choir.  We already agree with all this - and believe it or not - with
_you_ too (at least for the most part).  So what is your point?  It can only
be what you started out with, which is an attack on Bo as arrogant.  That's
fine.  It's not an issue for me one way or the other.  I'm not too
interested in the style someone uses - much more the substance.  If you
believe we _do not_ agree with the quotes, then you fail to understand what
we have been saying all along, and if you believe we _do_ agree with them,
then what was the purpose of presenting them couched in terms that imply
that in some manner we should be 'chastened'?  

As I said, this post of yours is bizarre.  

Pirsig rejects SOM, I reject SOM, You reject SOM, and Bo certainly rejects
SOM.  The Metaphysics of Quality was conceived by a 'thinking mind' as
thoroughly engaged with SOM as any.  SOM is a tool he used to develop the
MoQ, the Levels, and his entire philosophy.  It does not mean it _is_ SOM.
Where we seem to differ is in where we should place the MoQ in the grand
Pirsigian scheme of things.  In my view, it is unhelpful in the extreme to
give it equal stature with science, other persuasions of philosophy, and
ego.  

The analogy here is the same as the manner by which the Intellectual Level
broke free from its parent Social.  The Intellectual Level has deep roots in
the Social, but at some point latched on to a set of patterns of value that
are anathema to the Social Level's set of patterns of value; yet it did so
while at the same time maintaining a dependence for its own existence on the
Social.  Without it, the Intellectual Level could not survive and this is as
true today as the day it was born.  As with all ungrateful children, though,
it despises it at every turn.  In my view and Bo's, the MoQ bears the exact
same sort of relationship with the Intellectual Level now.

If you would place the MoQ no higher than the Intellectual Level, and in
fact, place it squarely within it, then you will need to explain exactly
what the Intellectual Level values which sets it apart "off on purposes of
its own" that differ in Value from the Social.  You will also have to
explain how the MoQ, which disparages SOM and finds it anathema is supposed
to fit within the same set of patterns of value.  

My definition of SOM makes perfect sense within the framework of the way the
Levels are allowed to interact with each other.  SOM is _not_ equivalent to
subject-object logic (SOL) alone.  It has the added flavor of attitude.
This attitude is the denial of Quality as the fundamental reality of the
Universe.  Which other philosopher ever said that?  I dislike seeing the
terms SOL and SOM slung around as though they are interchangeable, for they
are not, and to do so is to misunderstand the meaning of both and to make it
impossible to understand the relationship of the MoQ to either.

That I do not understand your anger is plain.  For indeed, I find this post
as puzzling as your earlier "anti- anti-intellectual" diatribe which equated
us with tea-baggers, republicans, and other Social Level riffraff.  If you
really believe any of that you are just not listening.

Best,
Mary

> 
> dmb said:
> On top of the several named by Pirsig, I have posted quotes from a
> number of philosophers wherein they specifically reject SOM.
> 
> 
> Bo replied:
> 
> ...Those rejections of SOM that you mention were failed attempts to
> escape SOM. Failed because it requires a metaphysics that has SOM as a
> sub-system and Phaedrus' breakthrough in ZAMM was that of seeing SOM as
> a fall-out of Quality  ..... and the S/O distinction called "intellect"
> FYI.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> 
> This is exactly why people get frustrated with you Bo. I have explained
> this to you already many times. For example, the following was
> addressed to you two and a half years ago. Not that it'll do any good,
> but here it is again. Please notice that I am quoting philosophers to
> make this point. What reason do you have for thinking you understand
> this stuff better than they do? You're smarter and better read than
> those hacks over at Stanford University, better than the scholars
> who've devoted their lives to studying this stuff? That is absurdly
> arrogant.
> 
> 
> Maybe you'd like to hear from some other pragmatists on the topic of
> SOM. John Stuhr is the Editor of "Pragmatism and Classical American
> Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays. (Oxford
> University Press, 2000.) He says, "In beginning to understand his view,
> it cannot be overemphasized that Dewey is not using the word
> 'experience' in its conventional sense. For Dewey, experience is not to
> be understood in terms of the experiencing subject, or as the
> interaction of a subject and object that exist separate from their
> interaction. Instead, Dewey's view is radically empirical" and
> "experience is an activity in which subject and object are unified and
> constituted as partial features and relations within this ingoing,
> unanalyzed unity" (PCAP 437). Or, as Dewey himself explains SOM in "The
> Need for a Recovery of Philosophy", "the characteristic feature of this
> prior notion is the assumption that experience centres in, or gathers
> about, or proceeds from a centre or subject which is outside the course
> of natural existence, and set over against it" (PCAP 449). This "prior
> notion" is what radical empiricism is rejecting. It is seen as a
> mistake and as the source of many fake problems in philosophy. As Stuhr
> puts it, "the error of materialists and idealists alike" is "the error
> of conferring existential status upon the products of reflection" (PCAP
> 437). This is a matter of treating our "products of reflection" as if
> they were ontological realities instead of parts of a conceptual
> scheme. In this case, subjects and objects are our primary example.
> When these abstractions are taken from the realm of practical doings
> and then asked to do work metaphysics or epistemology, it creates many
> problems and questions. Most of these have to do with how subjects and
> objects relate, how the former can know what the latter "really" is,
> for example. "The problem of knowledge as conceived in the industry of
> epistemology is the problem of knowledge in general - of the
> possibility, extent, and validity of knowledge in general" but, Dewey
> says in "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy", this problem only
> "exists because it is assumed that there is a knower in general, who is
> outside of the world to be known, and who is defined in terms
> antithetical to the traits of the world" (PCAP 449). Or, as William
> James puts it in "A World of Pure Experience", "the first great pitfall
> from which a radical standing by experience will save us is an
> artificial conception of the relations between knower and known.
> Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have
> been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities" and their relations
> have "assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had
> to be invented to overcome" (PCAP 184). I think all this fits quite
> neatly with Pirsig's attack on SOM. Not only does he explicitly align
> the MOQ with James's radical empiricism, he attacks SOM for the same
> reasons. He calls it a "metaphysical assumption" or "concepts derived
> from experience" instead of the "products of reflection" but the
> complaint is about mistaking intellectual abstractions for existential
> realities. And I suppose one of the reasons the abstraction seems so
> hard to shake is that we can't shake the practical doings of life from
> which they are drawn. The experience from which they are abstracted
> remains even when the abstractions are seen as such.
> "The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It
> claims that all legitimate knowledge arises from the sense or by
> thinking about what the sense provided. Most empiricists deny that
> validity of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority
> tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as
> art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as unverifiable. The
> Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the values of
> art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and that
> in the past they have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not
> empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the metaphysical
> assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects and objects
> and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object isn't
> real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. Its
> just an assumption" (LILA 99).
> "The second of James' two main systems of philosophy .was his radical
> empiricism. By this he meant that subject and objects are not the
> starting points of experience. Subjects and objects are secondary. They
> are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he described
> as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our
> later reflection with its conceptual categories'. In this basic flux of
> experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those
> between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter,
> have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience
> cannot be called either physical of psychical: it logically precedes
> this distinction" (LILA 365).
> 
> 
> If you can see your way through these ideas, Bo, then I just can't help
> you. That goes double for the English speaking defenders of Bo's
> equation. You guys are at odds with everyone who knows what they're
> talking about. You do not understand the meaning of the central terms
> in Bo's equation. Nobody has to take my word for it. Look it up. Go
> find out for yourself. The Stanford encyclopedia is free for everyone.
> That'd be a good place to start.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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