[MD] Subjects and Objects

[Steven Peterson]

Hi All,

I wish certain people would take seriously the distinction that Pirsig
made in the following quote from LC between subjects and objects as
grammatical terms and subjects and objects as ontological kinds. If
they did, we wouldn't have all this intellect= SOM nonsense to deal
with. Talking about subjects and objects is only SOM when subjects and
objects are given ontological status as the fundamental stuff
composing reality.



RMP:
"Yes, it’s clear I’ve been of two minds on whether subjects and
objects should be included
in the MOQ. My earlier view, when I was concentrating on the confusion
of subject-object
thinking, was to get rid of them entirely to help clarify things.
Later I began to see
it’s not necessary to get rid of them because the MOQ can encase them
neatly within its
structure—the upper two levels being subjective, and the lower two,
objective. Still later I
saw that the subject-object distinction is very useful for sharply
distinguishing between
biological and social levels.
If I had been more careful in my editing I would have eliminated or
modified the earlier
statements to bring them into agreement with the latter ones. However
I missed these and
it’s valuable that the Lila Squad has caught them. The main danger to
the MOQ from
subject-object thinking at present seems to be when it tries in a
conventional way to
encase values and declare them to be either objects or thoughts. That
was the attempt of
the professors in Bozeman in ZMM that started this whole MOQ.
At present, I don’t see that the terms “subject” and “object” need to
be dropped, as long
as we remember they are just levels of value, not expressions of
independent scientific
reality."

Best,
Steve