[MD] Bo vs. Bob

[MarshaV]

Greetings,

Seems to me the subject line is a setup!  


Marsha  



p.s.  

met·a·phys·ics  -  Philosophy  The branch of philosophy 
that examines the nature of reality.




On Jul 16, 2010, at 8:44 PM, Matt Kundert wrote:

> 
> 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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