[MD] Replacing SOM

[David Morey]

Hi Krim

Glad to be of service. The idea of levels is
also put forward by Roy Bhaskar but the version
I like most is from Arthur M Young in his Reflexive
Universe where he divides levels into the degrees
of freedom available at each level, well worth a
read. And here's my essay on this:

http://www.moq.org/forum/DavidMorey/ArthurMYoung.html

All the best
David M


-----Original Message----- 
From: Krimel
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2013 7:09 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] Replacing SOM

[DM]
You are quite right about Heidegger's rejection of SOM long before Pirsig,
and in many ways I see the glory of Pirsig to be the parallel development of
an alternative to SOM that has much in common with Heidegger, and in a
clearer and more approachable language than the one developed by Heidegger.
There are much greater riches in Heidegger's thought that have been explored
in hundreds of books by hundreds of different academics. However Heidegger
is rather lofty and is not very interested in the positive sciences, whereas
in my mind, one of the great things about Pirsig is his discussion of static
qualities. Roy Bhaskar criticises Heidegger about this failure to engage
with the positive sciences and addresses this in his Realist Theory of
Science, without losing the recognition of openness that Heidegger sees as
Dasein (being-the-open), and what Pirsig calls DQ.

[Krimel]
At last discussion about something substance rather than apologetics. Thanks
for the fresh air!

This is an interesting point. I haven't read Bhaskar but I see his complaint
echoed in Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception. There he draws
freely from the Gestalt and developmental psychologists while at the same
time criticizing their positive science underpinning. On the one hand, one
has to ask if their research is so poorly underpinned, how does their work
attain value? I suspect that Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and Husserl as
well, are reacting to Nietzsche's complaint that science is merely working
toward creating just another absolute. As a result it is useful but futile.
Personally I don't think that is what science is doing but that reaction is
wide spread.

[DM]
So for me Pirsig's great promise is to couple static and dynamic aspects as
poles of the unity of experience he calls quality.

[Krimel]
That statement alone is a breath of fresh air in an environment gone rancid.
Thanks!

[DM]
Directly experiencing the static qualities of our experience mean that we
can recognise positive qualities of sameness and regularity in our
experience, that it is possible to do science and be realists about the
regularities that we experience, that is clearly dominated by change and
flux but nonetheless contains island of regularity and sameness that can be
built on, analysed, conceptualised, and used to make sense of our
experiences and to reach some level of human understanding of our
experiences.
If it was all DQ without SQ there could be no way to make sense of our
experiences and no way that there could be any cosmos evolving through order
and chaos to make the levels of SQ exist and move the openness of DQ along
and upwards with the levels of SQ. For is not DQ all about the quality of
values, so that DQ evolves along with SQ, so that the values of particles,
atoms, molecules, amoeba, plants, animals and finally humans, all based on
increasingly complex levels of SQ and increasingly complex and felt levels
of dynamic quality. Or to use an old alchemical metaphor the cosmic tree
keeps growing and at every branching point burns the flame of DQ. To my mind
DQ is a flame that burns everywhere at every level, exploring the openness
of possibility, possibility that emerges and becomes more complex as it
builds up levels of order/SQ. In this sense DQ changes in character, the
dynamic unfolding of possibility in more complex and changes in nature as it
emerges at different levels.

In other words quality and the quality of experience evolves up the levels,
so the quality experience of stones is simpler and less interesting than
that of plants or animal or humans who enjoy a level of static and dynamic
qualities that we usually refer to with the word 'consciousness' but in MOQ
terms is realised via 4 levels of SQ and the sort of DQ that human beings
are able to experience (as opposed to what rocks experience).

[Krimel]
I agree for the most part. If you need a sore spot to pick at, I have never
been that big of a fan of the whole level's thing. It has always seemed to
me to be at best a useful fiction. More like an attempt to pour the new wine
of Quality into an old wine skin. But it doesn't really get my knickers in a
twist. Neither do I care much for talking about the "experience" of rocks. I
get the point but seems like a really bad way of thinking about the
inanimate. Rather it serves as a way to give credence to the kind of top
down mysticism that has "reality" being discovered rather than invented.

[DM]
Whitehead is also a key thinker who has set out another impressive
alternative to SOM, the best book on this I have read is easily this one:

[Krimel]
I read a bit of Whitehead back around the time Sneddon's Master's thesis was
posted. When I wrote to him about his reply suggested he had moved past
Pirsig and wanted no part these discussions. I suspect he would be
embarrassed at the way his name gets dropped around here. Never-the-less I
remain grateful for his contribution.

[DM]
Again there are many parallels to Pirsig and Heidegger.

[Krimel]
I will be hip deep in Heidegger for about the next month so it would be
great to bounce some ideas off you, if I get any...

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