[MD] Bo vs. Bob

[Matt Kundert]

Hi John,

John said:
The thing is, we're born at the top of the mountain.  All the 
paths (intellectual games and religions) lead DOWNWARD, 
away from the top of the mountain from that point.

Matt:
That is an interesting gestalt switch.  I think it's _misleading_, 
but that's because I think the kind of "back to origins!" 
rhetoric that is latent in almost every religious and intellectual 
tradition is misguided (the kind of rhetoric that has us talking 
about how DQ the baby is).  What about this: being born is 
like falling from the sky, out of nowhere, to the ground.  
Being intellectual is climbing that mountain, or building that 
Tower of Babel, trying to get back to what you imagine as 
the origins.  The misleading bit of the very traditional Fall 
Story is that there is somewhere to get back to.  I think the 
better part of 2500 years of Western philosophy has taught 
me that there's no there there.  The climb up the mountain is 
real, as is the process of climbing into a culture (the length 
of the "fall"), but there is no heaven (which has its parallel in 
the Eastern notion of Enlightenment) where you completely 
evacuate your connection to "fallen" life, the world.  I think 
that's just a specific kind of effect created, like everything 
else, from a specific kind of connection to the world.

John said:
As far as the point that intellect = SOM, I agree completely 
with Bo. That's just the definition of the term and the 
metaphysical reality of the concepts.  Intellect is only half 
the evolved human consciousness, however, and Pirsig 
calling the 4th level "intellectual" was due to Pirsig's 
particular blind spot - the one that Phaedrus hated and 
overthrew in ZAMM.

>From my perspective today, (and I'd claim from the snip of 
the Oxford DVD that Mary shared, Pirsig's as well)  It should 
have been called something indicating the 
Intellectual/Artistic continuum  and perhaps we wouldn't 
have suffered so much conflict and strife in our attempt at 
making this map back up the mountain.

Because Intellect IS SOM.  Make no mistake about that.

Matt:
Might you more systematically deploy the kinds of 
definitions you are using for your terms.  Because, 
argumentatively speaking, you beg the question about 
whether intellect is SOM or not when you define it that 
way.  The obvious response is, "Well, of course 'intellect is 
SOM' if you _define_ it that way.  What if you don't?"  
Which means we need to talk about what parts of reality 
are being picked out by our terms, and then whether they 
fit together in the specified kind of way (and then whether 
Pirsig also thinks they fit together in the specified kind of 
way).

For example, do you differentiate between a 
"subject/object distinction" and a "subject/object 
metaphysics"?  That'd be a good place to start.  And then, 
"how do you define metaphysics and the performance of 
that activity (if it is an activity)?"

You seem to be saying that you wish the levels had been 
named Inorganic/Biological/Social/Consciousness, with 
the top level broken into, roughly, Classic and Romantic, 
as Pirsig had it in ZMM.  Right?  If that is so, then--moving 
to Pirsig interpretation--you'd need to defend the notion 
that in ZMM (or, in some other complicated inferential 
pattern based on what he's said), Pirsig defined "classic" 
as "SOM."  That doesn't strike me as true, but I haven't 
read ZMM in a long while (and have no complex 
interpretational pattern on hand).  The interpretation of 
"the S/O distinction as classic" strikes me as decent, but 
I'd need to know more about what you mean by 
"metaphysics," and how you differentiate (or relate) 
Pirsig's enemy in ZMM (dialectic) to his enemy in Lila 
(SOM), and both to how you perceive a reconstruced, 
I've-successfully-defeated-my-enemy version of any of 
these items (i.e., are you saying there's no difference 
between SOM before and after any critique of it?).

These, I think, might be some of confusions that haunt 
appreciation of what ideas hide in the slogan 
"intellect=SOM."

Matt
 		 	   		  
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