Re: LS Last word
JONATHAN STRESSES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SO-THOUGHT & SO-METAPHYSICS Hi Bo, DLT and Squad, (also, refs Cntryforce, Struan) BO > I will try to get this through at the eve of September the 30th, and > perhaps beat you all in the "last word" race. Sorry Bodvar, but you lose ... > > DLT > I see that you have adjusted your view and say that Strawson was > right in calling Pirsig numbingly unclear, and that Popper is your > man now. I'm not sure that Bo is being quite fair here. He has jumped on anyone who dares to criticize Pirsig, perhaps believing that Pirsig is HIS MAN, who can do no wrong. Bodvar, I'm not sure if you are one of those people who follows one hero until disillusionment, and then jumps to a new hero. However, I don't think it fair to depict DLT as that sort of person. I believe that it is much healthier to adopt a critical attitude to both Pirsig and his detractors and look for what is BEST among all the various philosophers and philosophologists. I personally regard Pirsig's work as imperfect, but generally GOOD! > > Many people have presented their favourite write/thinker as saying > exactly what Pirsig does, but nowhere do I find the "Pirsigian > opening"; the initial recognition of SOM. IMHO Pirsig hasn't *invented* a new way of thinking. He has put his finger on the way we *really* think, as distinct from the way we THINK we think (which he calls SOM). (Now reread that 3 times until it makes sense) I think that much of what Bodvar writes leads to a confusion about the difference between SOM and SO thought. SO thought is a system of rationality which dominates our culture. According to radical empiricism, SO thought *exists* - the world would be different without it. SOM is a metaphysics which regards as *real* only those "things" that can explicitly be formulated in SO terms. This leads to a ridiculous situation because SO thought cannot be used to establish the veracity of itself!!! For two and a half thousand years, the SO thought has been honed as a fine tool to analyze and process almost every aspect of human experience. Now the philosophers of the modern age suddenly realize that SO thought can't analyze itself!!! One way to confront the problem is Pirsig's frontal attack on using SO thought as a metaphysical starting point (i.e. SOM). Some of Pirsig's detractors (e.g Strawson, our own Struan) would say that Pirsig's SOM is a strawman, since SO thought was never really a metaphysics anyway. This is more a semantic than a substantive disagreement. What is much more serious is the resurgent view in this forum (and MD) that SO thought itself must be replaced. Anyone who wants a good illustration should check out the posting by [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 29th September (MD forum). Ironically, Bo himself has tried to save SO thought by placing it with honour as the Intellectual Level of the MoQ. What is critical here is not how well the various philosophers do in trashing SO thought, but how well they can construct a metaphysics that can contain it. Moreover, the "winner" should be the metaphysics which provides the scale on which other systems can be assessed. If Pirsig's MoQ is really good, it should help us to understand what makes GOOD ideas good and BAD ideas bad. It should provide a good framework for discussing the work of Popper, Charles Peirce, Schumacher, other philosophical works, and even SO-thought. So what does MoQ really say about SO thought (as I understand it)? SO is GOOD for fixing motorcycles, healing the sick, building roads and dams etc. etc. SO is BAD or even dangerous when it is pursued without regard to non-SO concepts like intuition, emotion and ethics. Have a nice weekend everyone! Jonathan MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
LS Last word
David L., Roger and Squad I will try to get this through at the eve of September the 30th, and perhaps beat you all in the "last word" race. DLT I see that you have adjusted your view and say that Strawson was right in calling Pirsig numbingly unclear, and that Popper is your man now. I have also adjusted my relationship with Pirsig's work since the eventful day in 1978, but rather the other way; the first emotional enthusiasm has given way to a realization of confronting something big that won't stop growing. Many people have presented their favourite write/thinker as saying exactly what Pirsig does, but nowhere do I find the "Pirsigian opening"; the initial recognition of SOM. This is crucial. Many speaks of the mind/body PROBLEM, but it is as if they take the problem for granted: THE WAY IT IS. No one has isolated the SOM before Pirsig. They merely go about how the mind/matter relationship WORKS: how mind influences matter; creates matter; how evolution migrates from matter to mind; IS mind, and so on, without realizing that it is possible to construct a different metaphysics that don't START with the SOM (except Charles Peirce perhaps, but he only reached the "trinity" stage of his Semiosis metaphysics. Much like the Q idea of ZMM) That everything is in the mind (idealism) is irrefutable from a SOM point of view. I called it child's play and maintain that. It is the classical empiricist sense argument. Sight for example. "Out there" are only light frequencies, colours are subjective. This goes for all other senses. Ipso facto: The world is in our mind. But this is not the MOQ and I become quite exasperated when people refer to this trite demonstration as something sensational. This has lead various thinkers to various conclusions, but - as said - no one but Pirsig has - from the above irrefutable demonstration - gone on to construct a NEW METAPHYSICS with that as a starting point. There's nothing but mind, let's call it value ..and so on. This is what never stops to thrill me about Pirsig' MOQ. Rid of the subject/object impasse a completely fresh vista appears that give openings for all sorts of enlargements and variations. But when someone - out of the noblest motives - tries to re-introduce mind in whatever guise (after it first having been used as the premise), I become quite exasperated. It will destroy the MOQ! Sorry Dave, I didn't mean to use you as a scapegoat, this was directed to Roger.Other philosophers presented as "saying the same as Pirsig" don't perturb me half as much, it only shows that - um - someone hasn't understood it ;-].The MOQ must be as esoteric as possible, everything that "comes close", but isn't it is the worst threat. ROGER Thanks for a lively discussion. I was a bit drained after the huge Sunday mail and not up to my best when addressing your famous "Stand and be counted!" thread. Perhaps I goofed about the quotation not being from LILA so I have to ask about its location (p.417 revealed no such). My reference re. what level contains what was from page 159 in the Bodeley Head edition where it says: "Mind is contained in the static inorganic patterns. Matter iscontained in the static inorganic patterns." This is however where he tries to integrate SOM into MOQ so it really don't apply to our controversy. However, lower down on that page he says: "Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society which originates out of biology which originate out of inorganic nature Again, not applicable perhaps, so I await your references. Privately perhaps. This topic will expire before we can have resolved our dispute about whether this ZMM quote "The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in the days of the sophists was recognized as such. The whole blessed thing is a human invention. (Ch3 p31) is valid in a MOQ context Bo MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
