[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[MarshaV]

Hello Steve,

Dmb got you stumped?
  

On Mar 30, 2010, at 12:01 PM, Steven Peterson wrote:

> Hi Marsha, Mary, Horse,
> 
> Marsha:
>> All you list are subject/object oriented.   For me there is a Quality Level where
>> Reality is Quality(unpatterned experience & patterned experience), and as of
>> yet, no language (except possible when used poetically) properly communicates
>> that reality.  Even within physics there is no way yet to intellectualize what is
>> still in its infancy of discovery and understanding.  I like best the possibilities
>> for entanglement.  But I will admit I know very little.
> 
> Steve:
> Quality level?
> 
> For Pirsig, "level" refer to a type of pattern of value. Are you sure
> that that is what you mean? What is a "Quality pattern of value"?

Where the MoQ represents Reality as Quality (unpatterned experience (indivisible, 
undefinable and unknowable) & patterned experience (all levels of all spovs))  



> Marsha:
>>> If your point is that because we "use subjects and objects [and] the associated
>>> rules for their manipulation" then the Intellectual level is strictly S/O then the
>>> MoQ, which is written in the same language, is also at this same level. So the
>>> MoQ is part of the Intellectual level - which is not what you or Bo appear to
>>> be saying.
>> 
>> Yes, there is the SOM explanation of the MoQ, where it is intellectually presented
>> and explained as a theory:  ZMM, LILA, SODV, etc., but there is also the MoQ that
>> represents Reality equals Quality(unpatterned experience & patterned experience.)
>> 
>> Mary has asked, and I have asked for examples of intellectual patterns that
>> aren't presented as the manipulation of reified concepts and the rules for their
>> manipulation, but I have seen no such examples.  Your process metaphysics is
>> most certainly a s/o presentation, hopeful for the future, but still mired in SOM.
>> 
>> I'm sticking with Bo.  The Intellectual Level is through and through SOM.
> 
> 
> Steve:
> 
> Your "I'm sticking with Bo" includes an implicit "So long, Pirsig's
> MOQ." On the other hand, most of what you say about your support of Bo
> little to do with what Bo is saying, so maybe you aren't completely
> off Bo's rocker.

As far as I am concern, the only individual who can say for certain that 
I have left Mr. Pirsig's MoQ is Mr Pirsig.  Your judgement might be
interesting, but RMP is the authority.  And I'm not so sure I trust your 
comprehension of Bo's interpretation either.  


> 
> The key for you seems to be this statement "The Intellectual Level is
> through and through SOM." Metaphysics as an area of study is
> traditionally broken down into ontology and cosmology. It is the
> ontology aspect that is of issue here.  Ontology is the study of the
> nature if being. More specifically it is taken to refer to answers to
> the question "what sort of things exist?"

There are no things, there is Quality(unpatterned experience and 
patterned experience.)
 
 

> SOM answers to this question vary. Such answers include Locke's notion
> that there are two types of substances: mental substance (minds) and
> material substance (objects). Other answers include collapsing
> everything into material substance or everything into material
> substance.

ZZzzzzzzz
 
 

> 
> Where the MOQ (as well as pragmatism) differs from SOM is in saying
> that the whole project of trying to find the fundamental stuff of
> reality is wrong-headed. It says that there is no fundamental
> substance in which all the properties of rocks, trees, and people
> inhere. Instead the MOQ proposes as its ontology value relationships
> upon value relationships all the way down, and it distinguishes
> between a static as well as a dynamic aspect to those relationships.
> It further distinguishes types of relationships (value patterns) in an
> evolutionary hierarchy.

This is how it looks from the Quality Level, but an intellectual explanation
has problems:

"The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process 
of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean 
(and everybody else means) by the word quality cannot be broken down 
into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious 
but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct."
   (ZMM, Chapter 20)


> Now, where in all this do you get the notion that the fourth level of
> that hierarchy is SOM itself? Where are the mental substance and
> material substance that make up SOM ontology in this description?
> Nowhere of course. Intellect itself does not require that we postulate
> such substances.

Intellectual static patterns of value are reified concepts and the rules for 
manipulating them, if not offer some examples.  



> We can think without making any assertions about
> ontology whatsoever.

The subject is intellectual patterns of value, not intellect which, by the way,
is a reified concept.  



> Most people don't give any thought to
> metaphysics. They just follow static intellectual patterns of those
> who came before them, and  SOME of these patterns rely on the S/O
> ontological assumptions. But we can even use the words "subject" and
> "object" themselves without any ontological implication that these
> represent two types of fundamental substances that constitute all of
> reality. It is only when we make this presupposition that we are doing
> subject-object metaphysics.

SOM explanation through and through.   


> 
> Pirsig's intellect--the manipulations of symbols--does not require us
> to attach any ontological significance to the symbols as subjective
> stuff and material stuff. To the MOQer, the symbols don't refer to any
> kind of "stuff." The symbols are patterns of value, and they stand for
> more patterns of value.  There is no "stuff" to speak of except as a
> sort of pattern of value. It is patterns all the way down.

Net of jewels model sounds correct to me.  



> I would urge you not to make the mistake of thinking that every time
> you see the words "subject" or "object" or read a statement where
> words can be thought of as playing the grammatical role of subjects or
> objects that you have before you an example of SOM being played out.
> SOM is only of issue when there is ontological status attached to the
> terms as mental stuff and material stuff.  I'll spare you the quotes
> since you seen them so many times, but Pirsig was happy to retain the
> words "subject" and "object" in talking about his own metaphysics and
> certainly did not give these terms SOM ontological status.

And such is explained:

"Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely 
because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is 
an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and 
predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word quality cannot 
be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so 
mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct."
   (ZMM, Chapter 20)


> Pirsig gave some examples of intellectual patterns that have no
> subjects or objects such as mathematics, but he also notes that just
> because you are using the words "subject" and "object" doesn't mean
> that you are doing subject-object METAPHYSICS.

When a physicist can state that the equation calculating spin "is not 
just mathematics, but Real", RMP might want to rethink his statement
about mathematics not having objects.

 

Marsha  

 
___