[MD] Tuukka's letter to Robert Pirsig

[Ant McWatt]

Ant McWatt commented March 31st:

> >Tukkaa, I’ve read your
> > letter that you posted at MOQ Discuss on March 27th and, amongst all
> > the obscure Ptolemaic thinking, can’t see where you’ve unified the two distinct
> > metaphysical frameworks found in ZMM and LILA.
> 
> Tuukka:
> What do you mean by Ptolemaic? Obsolete?

Ant McWatt comments:

No not obsolete but rather Ptolemaic in comparison to Pirsig's much more simpler "Coperinican" system.

> 
> Tuukka:
> This is the MOQ in ZAMM: http://moq.fi/ZAMM-1.png
> 
> Here I split romantic quality into two patterns: 
> http://moq.fi/ZAMM-add-1.png
> 
> This is the MOQ in LILA. It is only about objective quality: 
> http://moq.fi/LILA-1.png
> 
> Here is my theory SOQ: http://moq.fi/RP-1.png

Ant McWatt comments:

Those are good, neatly designed diagrams.  However, if you have to refer to Dynamic Quality on a diagram, it should be unbounded; not boxed in.

> 
> Tuukka:
> 
> Subjective quality (the blue box), which was present in ZAMM, is absent 
> in LILA. Pirsig seems to have missed, that subjective value patterns 
> require subjective descriptions, and objective value patterns require 
> objective description. 

Ant McWatt comments:

Tuukka, I think you'd need to carefully define how you're using the terms "subjective" and "objective" in this context before much of what you've written in your letter (or your diagrams) could be considered meaningful.  If you refer to DiSanto & Steele's "Guidebook to ZMM" or Chapter 1 of my PhD, you'll see that pinning down the meaning of particular SOM terminology can be often like catching the proverbial ‘greased pig’:

"When we refer to people, methods and opinions as objective, the contrast is with ones that are biased, partial, prejudiced and the like.  Objectivity of this kind is, one might say, an epistemic virtue, something to be striven for if knowledge is to be effectively and reliably acquired.  But we also speak… of entities, properties and values as being objective.  Here, the rough intent is that something is objective if it exists or obtains independently of what people may think, experience or feel.  Expressions like ‘objective judgement’ and ‘objective proposition’ are therefore ambiguous.  The former, for example, may refer to a judgement arrived at in a suitably impartial, detached manner, or to one that concerns an objective state of affairs - the price of a wine, say, as opposed to its quality."  

David E. Cooper (The Measure of Things, 2002, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p.214)

It is apparent that within SOM the notions of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ can be assigned as metaphysical terms (referring to types of reality such as mind and matter) in addition to being assigned as epistemological terms (referring to ways of knowing; as in the ‘spectatorial’ accounts of knowing criticised by Heidegger).  A further SOM semantic construction of note is that being a ‘subject’ (for instance, being a centre of consciousness) is not usually considered problematic but (with the simple addition of a seemingly neutral suffix) being ‘subjective’ (as a criticism of being engaged in conscious activity that will lead to an incorrect relation with an object) is.  

On the other hand, it is considered problematic to treat people like objects but unproblematic (in most contexts) to treat them ‘objectively’ (i.e. without prejudice).  In this context, to treat people ‘objectively’ entails that they are not treated as ‘objects’.  On the other hand, it can be argued that it is only by subjectively identifying and empathising with their subjects that anthropologists, for instance, can arrive at fair-minded, informed and more ‘objective’ accounts.  Yet, this shows a typical ambiguity in SOM as we observe ‘subjective’ knowledge (gained through empathy and identification) mysteriously becoming ‘objective’.  I therefore hope you're beginning to see why it might also be better to avoid all SOM terminology in the first place if you're going to formulate a new metaphysical framework based on Pirsig's MOQ!

Best wishes,

Ant

(site administrator, www.robertpirsig.org)





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