[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

Andre

A sly plan, you will work me to death, If I refuse you will cry; "See he is 
a fraud!" ;-) 

6 May.:

I had said to Marsha:

> > The SOL is no Bo hobbyhorse but Phaedrus' of ZAMM's point where
> > the first deliberations on the Quality Ideas was
> > "pre-intellect/intellect", this becoming Quality/SOM (the only level at
> > that stage) And had the final MOQ kept the 4th. level = SOM all trouble
> > would have been avoided, as it is the MOQ has wasted ten years over this
> > quandary with the pig-headed resistance against a return to the roots.

Andre:
> Okay Bodvar, lets do a thought experiment: just imagine you are
> correct! Tell me what 'all trouble' and how 'all trouble' would have
> been avoided. And, after this, please, in summary form, how would you
> re-write ZMM and most importantly how would you re-write LILA! Just 20
> A-4 size pages each will suffice. Looking forward to your answer. 

"All trouble" is the ten plus year's quibbling over the intellectual level 
and it is not me creating it - and that the MOQ would have sailed 
happily along to full recognition had it not been for Bodvar - it's the 
fundamental flaw with that level from the outset. It's correct definition is 
the SOL one -  Phaedrus' insight - but Pirsig created a platypus and he 
admitted it in the PT letter which starts:

    September 23, 2003 Dear Paul Turner The question you raise 
    about the intellectual level has troubled me too. When I 
    answered Dan Glover in Lila's Child, I remember being a little 
    annoyed that anyone should ask what the intellectual level is-
    as though he were asking me what I mean by the word, "the." 
    Any definition you give is more likely to complicate 
    understanding than simplify it. But since then I have seen the 
    question grow because the answer I have given is inadequate.  

He then goes on to "repair" it and much of that goes in the SOL 
direction but not enough as to convince the pundits.  

    First of all, the line that, "Biologically [Lila's] fine, socially she's 
    pretty far down the scale, intellectually she's nowhere. . ." did 
    not mean that Lila was lying on the cabin floor unconscious, 
    although some interpretations of the intellectual level would 
    make it seem so. 

He thinks intellectual can be confused with consciousness, but that's 
hardly a risk, we all know that (he meant that) Lila isn't much of a 
academical . 

    Like so many words, "intellectual" has different meanings that 
    are confused. The first confusion is between the social title, 
    "Intellectual," and the intellectual level itself. The statement, 
    "Some intellectuals are not intellectual at all," becomes 
    meaningful when one recognizes this difference. I think now 
    that the statement "intellectually she's nowhere," could have 
    been more exactly put: "As an intellectual Lila is nowhere." 
    That would make it clearer that the social title was referred to 
    and the dispute about her intellectuality would not have arisen.   

Well, "intellectual" is the rational attitude, knowing objective from 
subjective and THAT ought to be the 4th level's definition. but it's as if  
he wants the LEVEL ITSELF to be the mental container that has this 
knowledge as one of its patterns, but the next day can have another 
content, and that's deeply wrong, the level IS its content. 

    Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect," 
    that can mean thought about anything and the word, 
    "intellectual," where abstract thought itself is of primary 
    importance. 

Here he correctly differs between "thoughts about anything" and 
"intellect", but then says that the latter is "abstract thought". However 
at the intellectual level (in SOM) the term 'thought' is abstract per 
definition so it's no escape from SOM. The correct definition would (in 
this context) have been that INTELLECT IS THE VALUE OF THE 
CONCRETE/ ABSTRACT  DISTINCTION.  

    Thus, though it may be assumed that the Egyptians who 
    preceded the Greeks had intellect, it can be doubted that theirs 
    was an intellectual culture.   

He could have said that the Egyptians were people, but they had not 
entered the intellectual level,  instead he chose this convoluted 
version. 

He then comes within a hair's breadth of the SOL by saying that it's no 
use to speak about an intellectual level before the Greeks (which 
spells SOM) but nullifies it by the "Manipulation of Symbols" definition 
and then for good measure adds the "non-S/O Oriental Intellect". It's 
like the latter-day Pirsig sees the gaping abyss that back in his 
Phaedrus day scared the wits out of him and feels the panic and 
recoils from it.  

OK this is one angle to the trouble, there are many, but it has to do for 
now. 

> And, after this, please, in summary form, how would you re-write ZMM
> and most importantly how would you re-write LILA! 

I would drop the opening argument about indications of "Quality being 
Quality" - this can neither be proved or disproved - and go straight to 
the MOQ and his initial reflections about "no one can avoid 
metaphysics" i.e. shy away from disparaging metaphysics as a menu 
and all that jazz. Then present its Reality=DQ/SQ axiom, the proof of 
which is in the pudding, ie. the superior explanatory power it provides. 
Otherwise the story itself - Lila Blewitt and all that - is great literature. 
But when it comes to the the explanations of how the SOM-generated 
platypuses are resolved by the MOQ I would re-arrange it along the 
SOL lines because that is how they ARE resolved, not the complicated  
Inorganic+organic=objective/ social+intellect=subjective model. The 
platypuses are resolved by being constructed at the intellectual level ... 
WHILE IT WAS SOM, while the S/O schism was seen as 
metaphysical valid. All platypuses will dissolve, no resolution is 
necessary There are tons of splendid stuff in LILA I would not touch or 
revise. Hope we will come to discuss some of this some time while I'm 
still around.  I would also have added a postscript where ZAMM is 
transcribed in a MOQ retrospect and that would of course have been 
along the SOL lines.

This isn't exactly 24 pages, but surely enough for you if you really read 
it in a wanting to understand mode, not just throwing yourself at the 
keyboard with counterarguments conceived long ago.
 
Bodvar