[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

DMB and Andre.

Andre to Marsha:
> ... and I am not the only one on this discuss who suggests that his pov
> is a detriment to the MOQ. Even Mr. Pirsig has said so!!! ( Annotn.
> 132/133) 

Guess it's the SOL Andre hints to, but as usual he speaks nonsense. 
Annotation 132 in Lila's Child" says: 

    It employs SOM reasoning the way SOM reasoning employs 
    social structures such as courts and journals and learned 
    societies to make itself known. SOM reasoning is not 
    subordinate to these social structures, and the MOQ is not 
    subordinate to the SOM structures it employs. Remember that 
    the central reality of the MOQ is not an object or a subject or 
    anything else. It is understood by direct experience only and 
    not by reasoning of any kind. Therefore to say that the MOQ is 
    based on SOM reasoning is as useful as saying that the Ten 
    Commandments are based on SOM reasoning. It doesn't tell 
    us anything about the essence of the Ten Commandments 
    and it doesn't tell us anything about the essence of the MOQ.     

And if anything this fits the SOL: "It (the MOQ) employs SOM 
reasoning ...etc. does more than anything shows that the MOQ is 
something above and in the position of "employing" SOM in the upper- 
lower level fashion, and the lower (SOM) must be intellect to employ 
the social level structures affirms that SOM must be = intellect to 
employ the social  level.   One must be pretty dense to use this 
annotation against the SOL, but then it's Andre you know.    

Annotation 133 requires a bit more beyond the "This undermines the
MOQ" sentence so muster all your attention.

Platt had said (page 397) 

    "So I fully agree with Bo's insight that the SOM and the 
    intellectual level are one and the same. To support it, to protect
    it, to avoid it losing it and sinking back to anything goes
    irrationalism or a "because God says so" mentality, we need to
    recognize its vulnerability to attack from academical
    philosophers, social do-gooders spiritual evangelists and its own
    internal paradoxes. To that end the MOQ is the best S/O answer
    I've found yet."   

The "it" Platt says must be protected was the Quality Idea as first 
conceived by the SOM-based Phaedrus of ZAMM - while it still was a 
dynamic intellectual pattern - and look how intellectually - rationally - P. 
went about the job of explaining the Quality Context. His idea would 
not have stood the snowball's chance if he - in the fashion of the 
Biblical prophets (social level in moqspeak) - had announced that it 
had been delivered to him by an angel, or written on the wall in fiery 
letters. He would have been kept in the mental home forever. No the 
MOQ would have to be super-rational to escape rationality, or in 
moqspeak it had to be super-intellectual to escape intellect.     


Pirsig's Annotation 133:
    I think this conclusion undermines the MOQ, although that is 
    obviously not PlattTMs intention. It is like saying that science is 
    really a form of religion. There is some truth to that, but it has 
    the effect dismissing science as really not very important. The 
    MOQ is in opposition to subject-object metaphysics. To say 
    that it is a part of that system which it opposes sounds like a 
    dismissal. I have read that the MOQ is the same as Plato, 
    Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, James, Pierce, Nieztsche, Bergson, 
    and many others even though these people are not held to be 
    saying the same as each other. This kind of comparison is 
    what I have meant by the term, oephilosophology. It is done by 
    people who are not seeking to understand what is written but 
    only to classify it so that they donTMt have to see it as any thing 
    new. God knows, the MOQ has never had two better friends 
    than Bo and Platt, so this is no criticism of their otherwise 
    brilliant thinking. ItTMs just that I see a lowering of the quality of 
    the MOQ itself if you follow this path of subordinating it to that 
    which it opposes.  

Pirsig manages to misunderstand Platt's point. He thinks that his own 
objective - rational - effort to escape SOM's objectivism or rationality 
makes the MOQ a SOM pattern. 

(An aside: If anything makes the MOQ a SOM patter it's his own 
"MOQ an intellectual pattern" assertion).
                                      
The MOQ or Quality Idea began as a instable - dynamic - intellectual 
pattern, but is now in the process of taking off on a purpose of its own 
had it not been for you tail-draggers who want it to be an intellectual 
pattern for ever. A gross violation of PIRSIG'S container logic, but that 
does not make a dent in your dense armor.   

DMB vails:
> Right. This is the part that bothers me the most. We have the author
> on record saying that he thinks Bodvar has misinterpreted the MOQ in
> a way that undermines it. I don't see how a reasonable person could
> dismiss Pirsig or defend Skutvik on this point. It's hard to imagine
> how the evidence could be more convincing. It's explicit,
> unequivocal and directed at his particular misinterpretation.

Nowhere will you find anything about me misinterpreting the MOQ 
rather the Solomonic "...if the SOL has quality it will percolate to the 
top". And it seems to be on its way up.


Bodvar