[MD] SOM & the MOQ's four levels as a form of realism

[David Morey]

Arlo said:
You can argue that a better metaphysics must include pre-experiential 
'things/patterns/objects/existence', but we really need to be clear that 
this IS "SOM", and that simply not using 'subjects' and 'objects' doesn't 
change that.

DM: Talking about pre-conceptual SQ does not introduce pre-experiential 
things or objects, but it does help to give us an ontology of both DQ and 
SQ, SQ is real and experienced. Only when we move on to conceptual SQ can we 
really get a handle on the reality of SQ/patterns when we are not 
experiencing them, especially when we use SQ concepts and pattern analysis 
to do cosmology and evolution that only make sense with and clearly embody 
and assume realism, unless MOQ wants to get itself in a reality denying 
tizzy with evolution and cosmology I suggest it embraces realism as a good 
idea with good evidence, fossils, cosmic background radiation, etc. Clearly 
keeping realism but rejecting S-O metaphysics is not simple or without 
value, it simply separates SOM dualism from the realism associated with it, 
because the realism is a good idea with empirical evidence supporting it. 
Obviously a realist MOQ is not SOM, and neither is a non-realist MOQ, that 
is not SOM either. Taking a different option over realism is not to 
reintroduce SOM, subject-object metaphysics makes a mess of realism, but it 
is much more about the metaphysical substance and ontological status of 
subjects and objects then it is about realism, that is pretty obvious and 
pretending that SOM cannot be separated into its different elements is 
easily done. It is obvious that realism is a separate philosophical idea 
from subject-objects essentialism, and there are many forms of non-SOM 
realism, AN Whitehead's philosophy for example, Roy Bhaskar's for another. 
Some thinkers are realist about Taoism and the Tan, others are not. If you 
want to argue  against realism as an idea to be retained in the MOQ please 
do so on its own merits and resist trying to blow smoke screens around your 
empty arguments by pretending that realism cannot be separated out from SOM, 
or are you not keen on analytical philosophical reasoning? Should stop 
taking part in philosophical debates if you don't like this sort of thing. 
Now I am sure you value a non-realist approach to MOQ, you make believe that 
Pirsig agrees with you, but lets have reason and arguments rather than this 
constant flag waving about SOM coming back into the MOQ or smoke screens 
being blown up to pretend the easy, like distinguishing between realism and 
the core of SOM, is impossible, says you maybe, but you just need to try 
thin king a little bit more analytically I'd suggest. Sorry if this hurts 
people's feelings, but bad argument and misrepresentation needs to be called 
out when it is all that is being offered, if you can;t see that is all too 
often all that is being offered then I can't help. I am not saying go away 
or I won't talk to some people any more, or that nothing you say makes any 
sense (unlike some strange people round here some of the time), but please 
let's see some better arguments, explanation and genuine defence of these 
non-realist, solipsistic, anthropocentric, idealistic positions. MOQ needs 
to re-describe everything in experience in MOQ terms, and if people want to 
do this as a form of non-realism let's hear how this works, and how it makes 
sense of the way patterns do come and go in our experience, and how you 
non-realists understand the status of these patterns if they only exist in 
experience, why is there so much evidence that patterns go on interacting 
with each other when we are not experiencing them? Or as I suspect you just 
want to say "Mu, we can't comment, what happens when we are not experiencing 
patterns is just an empty flux, we can't really do history or science, we 
stick to the confines of experience, we don't like to reason about the 
non-human too much because we are afraid of looking like SOMers, we do not 
want to see SQ as real and existing independently of human experience 
because this opens the MOQ to the challenges and authority of the 
achievements of science, and we have not yet worked out what a non-SOM 
science should look like". Well that's how your position comes across as, am 
I right or wrong?