[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[Mary]

Hi DMB & Bo,

On Behalf Of skutvik at online.no
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:40 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Reading & Comprehension
> 
> DMB, All.
> 
> 11 May you quoted  a lot of philosophers allegedly having rejected
> SOM and you conclude (I must begin with the end to make sense  :
> 
> > If SOM and the intellectual level are identical, then how would it be
> > possible for all four of these philosophers to reject it for
> > intellectual reasons?
> 


[Mary Replies] 
Bo says RMP rejected SOM for Quality reasons:

> Phaedrus rejected SOM for Quality reasons and so did "these
> philosophers", but they brought it no further.
>

 
[Mary Replies] 
I wonder if what you weren't driving at, though, DMB, was the question of
how one (or 4 philosophers as in your example) can reject SOM by using SOM?
This is a perfectly natural outgrowth of SOM.  A somewhat overdue next
logical step wouldn't you say?  I could as well turn the question back
around and ask you why not?  

If the Intellectual level contains as part of its value set the notion of
free and independent thought unfettered by Social constraints, beholden only
to the experiential, then what would prevent it?  Seems logical to me that
once the Intellectual Level had thoroughly trounced the Social Level with
its unassailable objective logic, the next victim would be SOM itself.
Patterns are trusty friends, though, and this has taken a very long time to
emerge.  

If the Intellectual Level can commit heresy against the Social, what's to
stop the open-minded intellect from committing heresy against itself? 

It is entirely possible to trash SOM by SOM.  You can see it every day in
this very forum.  It is a valid - high Quality - use of SOM.  

It is exactly what Pirsig himself did.


Best,
Mary



> > Doesn't prove that Bo's position is untenable? I think so. SOL is RIP
> > and Bo is a no go, bro.
> 
> These philosophers knew no S/O metaphysics the way Pirsig presents
> it in ZAMM - a world view having arrived at a point in history and
> subsumed Good by " ...converting it to a rigid, immobile Immortal
> Truth" and further - in LILA - presented a new world view which in turn
> subsumes SOM by making "immortal Truth" - i.e. intellect -  into its
> own highest static Good.
> 
> The point is that it's no great feat to criticize the S/O  but without
> a new
> metaphysics where the S/O is subsumed it's stillborn, I can come up
> many more S/O critics but - as said - without a system which provides
> a place for the S/O it leads nowhere.
> 
> dmb quotes Hildebrand:
> 
> > "Realists and idealists assume that subject and object are discrete
> > and then debate which term deserves first rank. Dewey assumes that
> > what is primary is the whole situation - 'subject' and 'object' have
> > no a priori, atomistic existences but are themselves DERIVED from
> > situations to serve certain purposes, usually philosophical" (Beyond
> > Realism and Antirealism, p27).
> 
> Yes, what I repeatedly have said about intellect's (as SOM) eternal
> see-saw.
> 
> > "The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by
> > experience will save us is and artificial conception of the relation
> > between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the
> > subject and object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous
> > entities; thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the
> > 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical
> > nature which all sort of theories had to be invented to overcome"
> > (James, A World of Pure Experience, p 27).
> 
> Can't find better preliminaries for a rebellion against the S/O, but it
> peters out here,  where is the realization of S/O as SOM and the
> alternative Metaphysics that will subsume it?
> 
> > It probably goes without saying, but Dewey is rejecting SOM and
> > conceiving the primary reality in terms of "the whole situation"
> > rather than anything dualistic. The "whole situation" is whole
> > precisely because it is as yet undifferentiated into thought and
> > thing, knower and known, subject and object, etc.. Those kinds of
> > intellectual distinctions or differentiations are derived from the
> > whole situation, and this whole situation is what James calls pure
> > experience or the immediate flux of life.
> 
> OK, Dewey and James may have started on a new metaphysical
> system where "the whole situation" and/or the "immediate flux" may be
> likened to DQ and what spawns the subject/object distinction , but in
> ZAMM the SOM history was told and in the proto-moq it was called
> INTELLECT and  in LILA made into highest static quality level and
> thus the necessary "subsuming act" was performed.
> 
> You'll notice that this is the SOL interpretation, i.e the way Phaedrus
> would have completed the MOQ had he lived. And had you been
> honest you would have to admit that it is the only viable
> interpretation.
> 
> > As James puts it, in the moment of pure experience "its phases
> > interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity
> can
> > be caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for
> > feeling or sensation [aesthetic value]. But the flux of it no sooner
> > comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these salient
> > parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that experience
> > now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and
> > prepositions and conjunctions [static patterns].
> 
> I have nothing against good old James' presentation of "DQ", but his
> contention that what "solidifies" is concepts or abstracts is deeply
> wrong and Pirsig took a fatal turn by embracing that. As you correctly
> say above S/O is the "thought/thing, knower/known, subject and
> object" even if you had added "concepts/what is conceptualized,
> abstracts/what is abstracted " it too would have been correct. Check
> your facts!
> 
> You conclusion again.
> 
> > If SOM and the intellectual level are identical, then how would it be
> > possible for all four of these philosophers to reject it for
> > intellectual reasons?
> 
> Look ar the top. The intellectual level as SOM was rejected for Quality
> reasons!
> 
> > Doesn't prove that Bo's position is untenable? I think so. SOL is RIP
> > and Bo is a no go, bro.
> 
> Maybe Andre will swallow this, but not the true philosophers of this
> site. The SOL is gaining on your ... whatever it's called
> 
> 
> Bodvar
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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