[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[skutvik at online.no]

ALL MOQ DISCUSS!.

21 March. DMB  presented an old Paul Turner post, allegedly 
disproving the assertion that MOQ's 4th. level is the S/O distinction 
(SOLAQI once, now SOL)

Paul Turner: 
> Hi all, especially Bo This post is a response to Bo´s assertion that
> his SOLAQI fits better with Pirsig´s previous writing than the
> definitions given in Lila´s Child and correspondence, particularly
> Pirsig´s statement that the MOQ is also an intellectual pattern.
> This post is simply a series of excerpts from ZMM and one from Lila
> which require no commentary from me other than to say that
> rationality is clearly part of the intellectual level and that SOM
> is described here as traditional, conventional rationality. I think
> this series of quotes show that Pirsig conceived of the MOQ as a
> "root expansion" of rationality and, as such, is also part of the
> intellectual level.  

In case Paul peeks into our discussion or if DMB is capable of 
understanding ;-).
.
1) "Rationality is clearly part of the intellectual level" But then, what the 
heck was the intellectual level before rationality? It must have been the 
ancient times when people "reasoned" that gods or forces "ran" the 
show, but this is after all MOQ's 3rd - social - level. 

2) "A root expansion of rationality". If rationality merely is one 
intellectual pattern and the MOQ another, then all static levels are 
intellectual patterns, they only exists in the MOQ. This turns completely 
absurd and turn the MOQ into some oddball society. No, the 4th level 
is "rationality" (there is no such without the objective approach) and the 
MOQ the Quality Reality.   .     

It' really superfluous to comment the quotes but here we go.

                                 -----------------------

> "Phædrus spent his entire life pursuing a ghost. That was true. The
> ghost he pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all
> of modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of
> rationality itself." 

Right Phaedrus' (ZAMM) target was "rationality" or SOM, which he 
called "intellect" in the proto-moq, and had he carried that on to LILA 
would have spared us ten years of haggling over this issue.

> "To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as
> "the system" is to speak correctly, since these organizations are
> founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a
> motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when
> they have lost all other meaning and purpose."
>  "But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to
>  avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack
>  effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon
>  effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real
>  system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself,
>  rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the
>  rationality which produced it is left standing, then that
>  rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution
>  destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of
>  thought that produced that government are left intact, then those
>  patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.
>  There's so much talk about the system. And so little
>  understanding." 

Ditto,   

> "Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward
> into a better world. They are taking it further and further from
> that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As
> long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they
> will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these
> needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of
> reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate.
> It begins to be seen for what it really is...emotionally hollow,
> esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty." 

Sure "rationality" - the SOM - has brought us huge benefits, but as the 
conviction that everything good is SUBJECTIVE while the real 
OBJECTIVE world  a material mass obeying indifferent natural laws, 
this is a bleak outlook. The MOQ preserves this by relegating SOM 
(minus "M") the role of its highest static level, yet subordinated the 
DQ/SQ constellation. 

> "One can see how both the informal and formal processes of
> hypothesis, experiment, conclusion, century after century, repeated
> with new material, have built up the hierarchies of thought which
> have eliminated most of the enemies of primitive man. To some extent
> the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very
> effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive
> conditions. It's such a powerful, all-dominating agent of civilized
> man it's all but shut out everything else and now dominates man
> himself. That's the source of the complaint." 

Yes, here he says the very same thing.

> "What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the belief that
> the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of
> thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational
> means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem.
> The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level
> by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings
> alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them.
> And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm
> trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you
> abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so
> that it's capable of coming up with a solution."
>  "We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes
>  the topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to
>  deal with new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real
>  learning results from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the
>  branches of what you already know, you have to stop and drift
>  laterally for a while until you come across something that allows
>  you to expand the roots of what you already know. Everyone's
>  familiar with that. I think the same thing occurs with whole
>  civilizations when expansion's needed at the roots." "The whole
>  Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy
>  feeling caused by Columbus' discovery of a new world. It just shook
>  people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere.
>  There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New
>  Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn't deny it. The only
>  way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval
>  outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason." "Columbus has
>  become such a schoolbook stereotype it's almost impossible to
>  imagine him as a living human being anymore. But if you really try
>  to hold back your present knowledge about the consequences of his
>  trip and project yourself into his situation, then sometimes you
>  can begin to see that our present moon exploration must be like a
>  tea party compared to what he went through. Moon exploration
>  doesn't involve real root expansions of thought. We've no reason to
>  doubt that existing forms of thought are adequate to handle it.
>  It's really just a branch extension of what Columbus did. A really
>  new exploration, one that would look to us today the way the world
>  looked to Columbus, would have to be in an entirely new direction."

Here are "food"  for much "bravos" and "hear-hears", but this is ZAMM 
where the enemy still was "rationality" he had not yet coined the SOM 
it seems. But at the top he says that  .

    It (the ills) can't be solved by rational means because the 
    rationality itself is the source of the problem.  

meaning that the MOQ must be "out of SOM" (subduing it with rational 
means) and that's important. The MOQ must NOT appear as a 
mysticism or the Strawsons will laugh all the way to his lectures.

> "Like into realms beyond reason. I think present-day reason is an
> analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far
> beyond it you're presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are
> very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is
> comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of
> the world. Or the fear of heretics. There's a very close analogue
> there."
>  "But what's happening is that each year our old flat earth of
>  conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the
>  experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of
>  topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in
>  irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes
>  and the like...because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason
>  to handle what they know are real experiences." "Analytic reason,
>  dialectic reason. Reason which at the University is sometimes
>  considered to be the whole of understanding. You've never had to
>  understand it really. It's always been completely bankrupt with
>  regard to abstract art. Nonrepresentative art is one of the root
>  experiences I'm talking about. Some people still condemn it because
>  it doesn't make 'sense.' But what's really wrong is not the art but
>  the 'sense,' the classical reason, which can't grasp it. People
>  keep looking for branch extensions of reason that will cover art's
>  more recent occurrences, but the answers aren't in the branches,
>  they're at the roots." "A motorcycle functions entirely in
>  accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of
>  motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of
>  rationality itself." 


Right, but here is a snag. A motorcycle can be split apart in theoretical 
box diagrams  while standing there completely unscathed, but not so 
with reality, this lead to the "diagram fallacy" but enough for now.  

> "Now I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be
> tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through
> the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." 

In the first proto-moq the "Classic Rationality" was NOT expanded, 
rather our understanding was tremendously expanded by his showing 
us that "classic" (SOM or "intellect") was part of a greater 
arrangement, namely  (at that time) the "Romantic/Classic" one.

> "It's long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative
> preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by
> those who make so much of these facts after they are "observed." I
> think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role
> of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical
> vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far
> closer to actual scientific practice." 

OK!

> "I think the basic fault that underlies the problem of stuckness is
> traditional rationality's insistence upon "objectivity," a doctrine
> that there is a divided reality of subject and object. For true
> science to take place these must be rigidly separate from each
> other." "When traditional rationality divides the world into
> subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when you're really
> stuck it's Quality, not any subjects or objects, that tells you
> where you ought to go."
>  "Phædrus went a different path from the idea of individual,
>  personal Quality decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps
>  if I were in his circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that
>  the solution started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even
>  broader than that...a new spiritual rationality...in which the
>  ugliness and the loneliness and the spiritual blankness of
>  dualistic technological reason would become illogical. Reason was
>  no longer to be "value free." Reason was to be subordinate,
>  logically, to Quality." 

OK!

> "The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection
> of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it
> is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science
> are of a higher evolutionary order than the old biological and
> social patterns. 

He speaks of  "...the intellectual patterns of science ..." as if there are 
other non-scientific or irrational intellectual patterns, but that's absurd. 

> But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the
> value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a
> laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive
> one-is another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral
> order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for
> philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for
> church authorities to suppress scientific method. Dynamic value is an
> integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress
> itself." 

Amen

Not much anti-SOL in any of these passages. 

Bodvar.