[MD] The Mythos-Logos issue.

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, Andre, All

I'm om the road and my inputs may be out of sync.

Mary to Ian:
> Yes, SOM is wha t caused Pirsig to suffer a breakdown. 
 
Andre:
> No! SOM does not 'cause' anything Mary. And calling Phaedrus'
> experience a 'breakdown' in the traditional SOM sense (as I think you
> do) is missing the DQ 'force'.

Mary is right, it was intellect-as-SOM's immune system that struck him 
down, and it was not "agents" with straight-jackets or syringes coming 
after him, but his own intellectual "layer" that caused the "mental" (as 
intellect calls it) breakdown.  
 
> SOM/SOL logic divides human experience into subjects and objects. The
> problem is that you cannot do this. It does not cover it. 

The subject/object distinction (or aggregate) covers exactly the 
intellectual LEVEL, but it does not cover the "intellect" of SOM - i.e. it 
"covers" it, but does not correspond to it. You think of intelligence 
when speaking of intellect, and this enormous discrepancy you aren't 
able to sort out, and until that you are lost.   

> This is one of the basic premises of the MOQ. This is the difference,
> the expansion of LILA from ZMM...the romantic/classic into DQ/sq.
> Phaedrus did not suffer a breakdown (in SOM terms) he had a unique DQ
> experience (in MOQ terms) and from this experience developed the
> MOQ.Remember the Indian/peyoty experience in LILA? This experience, as
> a pure empiricist, was a signal to Phaedrus, just as it was to William
> James, Dewey, Northrop et al that dividing experience into subjects and
> objects is not complete and therefore false. Okay, check it out for
> yourself! I would, imh experience say: experience for yourself...find
> out for yourself. 

The expansion (of reason) issue. If the intellectual level has SOM as 
one level among several, is it then just SOM that will be expanded or 
will the MOQ take the topmost position of "good intellect"  and press 
old SOM under as "bad intellect? In any case intellect is no longer a 
static level, but GOF "mind" and what's the purpose of the MOQ?     
.
> My response to your statement that the MOQ arose when Phaedrus was
> 'steeped in SOM' is that this is not so and that Phaedrus was steeped
> in Quality, Mary. Looking at it from this point of view makes much more
> sense to me than this silly MOQ out of SOL/SOM diversion. We are
> discussing the MOQ from the MOQ perspectives and not from the single
> minded SOL pattern! 

You have learned all the right phrases from the grownups, but coming 
from you I shudder.


Bodvar