[MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

[david]

Tuk said to dmb:


I do see the point in making helpful simplifications about subjects being social and intellectual and objects being inorganic and biological. But what is the real deal about subjects and objects?



dmb says:


The real deal with subjects and objects is that they are not real. Like you said, social and intellectual values aren't "strictly" subjective. But that's NOT because the subjective emerges from the objective or the other way around. To say everything emerges from the subjective is to assert idealism and to say everything is objective and subjectivity emerges from that is to assert materialism. The MOQ is neither but it can explain both of them and, to a certain extent and with qualifications, both can fit into the MOQ.

The MOQ says that Quality comes first and subjects and objects both emerge from that. Instead of saying that mind is primary or that matter is primary, the MOQ says immediate experience is primary. That's why it makes sense for Pirsig to call Quality "the primary empirical reality" or "the cutting edge of experience". In the MOQ subjects and objects are concepts rather than actually existing substances or ontological structures.

Remember that section in ZAMM where the entirety of our reality is made of analogies? Every last bit of that reality was generated by Quality and among these analogies - which include earth and sky, religion and science, moons and stars - are subjects and objects. And if we try to explain all of reality in terms of those two opposed analogies we will certainly get into all kinds of philosophical trouble.

The question you're asking is seriously complicated by the nature of the statements you've used as a launching pad. In those quotes Pirsig is trying to explain how SOM would fit into the MOQ even though the MOQ is supposed to reject and replace SOM. That makes it super easy to get all tangled up. But just remember that empirical reality is what generated both sets of ideas. SOM can't be abandoned entirely because it's based on empirical reaIity so that the basic distinctions are not crazy. Even in the MOQ, imaginary guns can't shoot you and physical guns can't be stopped by wishes. But the MOQ insists that our inferences and idea about the ontological structure of reality can never be more real than the experiences from which they were inferred.

Later,


dmb


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From: Moq_Discuss <moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org> on behalf of mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 7:40 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] Why does Pirsig write everybody's right about mind and matter although his theses imply the opposite?

All,

Thanks to Dan it became apparent that the former topic of this thread,
which included the question "Why are sociality and intellectuality
strictly subjective?", was badly chosen. Sociality and intellectuality
aren't "strictly" subjective because the subjective emerges from the
objective and thus everything subjective is also objective. I will
begin by explicating the exact reason for this.

In the Turner letter Pirsig states that:

- The levels of static quality are, in ascending order, the inorganic,
the biological, the social and the intellectual level.
- What belongs to a higher level belongs also to the level below.
- What belongs to a lower level doesn't necessarily belong to the level above.

If A is a subset of B and B is a subset of C, then A is a subset of C.
I have actually seen what looked like a Venn diagram of the static
levels, probably by Anthony McWatt, and I've never heard anyone
complain about that. So it seems reasonable to assume that what
belongs to a higher level belongs to all the levels below, not just
the one level immediately below.

In chapter 24 of LILA Pirsig states:

"The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between intellect and
society, subject and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a
larger system of understanding.  Objects are inorganic and biological
values; subjects are social and intellectual values."

According to the Turner letter this means that everything subjective
is necessarily objective, but everything objective is not necessarily
subjective. Furthermore, the subjective emerges from the objective.

However, in chapter 12 of LILA Pirsig writes:

"So what the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that all schools are right
on the mind-matter question.  Mind is contained in static inorganic
patterns.  Matter is contained in static intellectual patterns.  Both mind
and matter are completely separate evolutionary levels of static patterns
of value, and as such are capable of each containing the other without
contradiction."

Why does Pirsig write this? According to idealism everything exists in
the mind. But if the subjective emerges from the objective, there are
things that are objective but that aren't subjective. This contradicts
idealism. Hence, all schools are not right on the mind-matter question.

Regards,
Tuk
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Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current paradigms allow