[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Pirsig

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Mary

23 May

You took the trouble with analyzing my long analysis of Matt  post and I 
skip where you and I (mostly) agree and I'm happy to see that that only 
leaves the final few lines     

Bodvar had said: 
> >...  there once was no S/O  - search the old books of the bible
> > (examples of the social reality according to Pirsig)  they are
> > devoid of any "I think about the world". The S/O arrived as told in
> > ZAMM, it assumed its role as SOM, but has been superseded by MOQ's
> > Dynamic/Static explanation and relegated the role as its 4th. level

[Mary Replies] 
> I disagree with this, Bo.  SOL has existed for as long as there have
> been 'minds'.  What was new with the Greeks, was an attitude.  The
> discreteness of thought was always there.

Again, SOL is just the abbreviation for the interpretation that says that 
the Intellectual level = SOM, thus I'm a bit unsure when you say "SOL 
has existed ...etc.. for a while I thought you meant that a kind of 
"dualism" exists on all levels that the respective immune system are 
built on, starting with biology's "self/not self", however this is not S/O. 

But you go on to say "...as long as there have been 'minds'" .  Now, if 
we agree that Intellect=SOM - and the mind/matter dualism is a SOM 
variant - then one may say that "minds"  only arrived with intellect, and 
I really do think so. You won't find any "I think" or "in my mind" ...etc. in 
f.ex. "The Iliad" or the Old Testament. 

If you say "there were minds just not discovered by people of old" you 
are back in SOM. (from ZAMM) 

    Yes the Greeks represented the coming of exactly that attitude 
    that things have always been there for us to discover. What is 
    essential to understand at this point is that until now there was 
    no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form 
    and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions 
    that came later. The modern mind sometimes tends to balk at 
    the thought of these dichotomies being inventions and says, 
    ``Well, the divisions were there for the Greeks to discover,'' 
    and you have to say, ``Where were they? Point to them!'' And 
    the modern mind gets a little confused and wonders what this 
    is all about anyway, and still believes the divisions were there. 

The only alternative is that you mean there have always been 
"thinking" (intelligence) since the neural system reached a certain 
complexity - i.e. brains - and if so we agree completely. Let me know if 
this jells. 

Bodvar