Acronyms

InPoV - Intellect Pattern of Value
MOQ - Metaphysics of Quality
SAIOM - Subject/Object Metaphysics as Intellect of Metaphysics of Quality
S-O - Subject Object
SOLAQI - Subject/Object Logic as Quality-Intellect
SOM - Subject/Object Metaphysics
SOTAQI- Subject/Object Thinking as Quality-Intellect
ZMM - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Bodvar's Recollections of SOLAQI

On November 4, 1998, Bodvar responded to a request from Roger Parker concerning a structured, comprehensive approach to history of what was then his SOTAQI idea. (Hopefully, these SOLAQI papers will be a step in that direction.) Bodvar wrote in return a brief history of his idea:

 
I have tried to trace the development (of the SOTAQI) from the first
posts, but Magnus' search engine brings up too many hits if I just
enter 'Intellect' or 'Mind' or any other single word, and I can't
recall the expressions or sentences used, so it'll have to be by
memory.

It started when we were on a thread of defining the Intellectual
level. You know, the Inorganic level is pretty straightforward: it is
"Matter" as we know it from SOM, so is the Organic (Life) and the
Social (the Collective), but the top notch is not so easily defined.
"Mind" comes to mind(!), but if so we have the old everything-in-the-
mind-problem of SOM back in force. Many use the ZMM where Phaedrus
asks where gravity was before Newton as a demonstration for the
idealist argument, but I'm not happy with it.

No, the MOQ isn't idealism, it rejects the subject-object
(mind-matter) division as fundamental, so - really - the Q-Inorganic
is not SOM's matter, nor is Q-Intellect SOM's mind. They really have
nothing in common  ---- except as Pirsig claims that the SOM is
"contained" by the MOQ. At this first stage, however, we weren't so
deep into it, but tried to find what characterized the Intellectual
level.

It somehow ended in rationality, mathematics, language, but under it
all lurked the notion of "thinking itself" of ...MIND. I believe it
was Diana who hinted to the coincidence between the events described
in the last part of ZMM (which we interpret as the birth of
subject-object metaphysics) and the emergence of the Intellectual
level as described in LILA. The two looks identical. Subject-Object
metaphysics as the Intellect of MOQ!!!!

It struck me as correct and abbreviated it SAIOM and started to sell
it to the group :-). But there was a certain resistance to the M
(metaphysics) part, so I removed that and replaced it with
S-O-thinking (or logic), something which was understood and accepted
by most. However Anthony McWatt wasn't convinced and in a letter to
Pirsig he asked for his opinion, but either because it was presented
in the SAIOM form, or he - principally - won't take sides, Pirsig's
answer wasn't easily interpreted. At least I could not take it as an
affirmation for my idea :-(.

As said, Pirsig asserts that SOM is contained by the MOQ in the
sense that the Inorganic & Organic levels are "matter", while the
Social & Intellectual are "mind". I am not saying that this is wrong,
but a little "feeble" and felt that it was to accommodate for the
unprepared audience at the conference in Bruxelles, but someone
pointed to it being said in LILA too. So much for me as a quality
"scholar" :-).

Yet, Inorganic and Organic value as matter doesn't quite jell with
me. Life is made up of matter all right, but it is supposed to be a
realm of its own. Likewise Social value as mind!? It could with as
much reason be said to be matter too as it is made up of living
organisms made up of matter. Also  - and this is my gravest -
objection: Subject-objectivism cannot - and should not - be gotten
rid of, it's VALUABLE; it has given us civilization as we know it.
Seeing it as the Static Intellectual Pattern of Value solved it all
for me. It was the highest GOOD, but being static it was still
subordinate to the overall Dynamic Quality; it was not a
metaphysics any more; the subject-object division is not fundamental;
AS IT IS, but a mere STAGE in the unending quality climb towards
betterness.

Besides, it is an important MOQ tenet that each level grows from the
previous which is easily demonstrated up to Society, but how can
Intellect in the "thinking itself" sense have originated from Social
value? It sounds much more like the good old SOM notion of mind out
of matter (or at least from the brain). Jonathan Marder once compared
Q-Intellect with a video camera trained upon a screen of its own
picture. That's pretty good "picture" and demonstrates the difficulty
of how anything can enter such a solipsistic loop, or how anything
can develop FROM it.

No, the MOQ rejects objects as a (fundamental) realm, but - even more
important: it rejects subjects as well: There is nothing objective
about the reality we observe from the Intellectual perch: we don't
see reality as it is, but are merely conscious of the subject-object
STAGE of VALUE (in the same way as we - when such focussed - are
conscious of social, biological and inorganic (?) values. It's of
course not anything "mere" about it, it's a realm of its own, but it
is STATIC all the same and Dynamic Quality will try to work itself
free of that straitjacket too. And I wonder if not the Quality idea
is such a first revolt....an attempt at it anyway.

This is a sensitive point of course. I don't want to
present my SOLAQI as an alternative to Pirsig's MOQ in any way, I
owe everything to his original achievement, it's merely a different
way to see the "containment of SOM within the MOQ" issue. At
times Pirsig's original:

      Inorg.+Org.=Objective/Soc.+Intell.=Subjective

seems to work, but when higher precision is needed the SOLAQI
may be applied. The latter being more esoteric, but (as I see it) it
solves the intellect-as-mind problem which is the only MOQ
platypus that I have spotted.

Newly Named SOLAQI

On November 13, 1998, Bodvar unveils his newly named SOLAQI:

Alex & Group.
Nice to meet you Alex. Being the old one (64) I feel called upon to
answer your questions. I see that Fintan Dunne already has done so,
but how much I love Fintan's great sweeps it's too ethereal (esoteric
perhaps) for your liking :-).

> (1) How does MoQ define truth. I know that Empiricism defines it as
> anything received by the senses or derived from them, And Pirsig said
> that MoQ subscribes to empiricism, But How does MoQ Define Truth?

LILA says somewhere that truth is an Intellectual Pattern of Value.
That is, among the highest values there are, but static all the same.
I don't know how deep you understanding of the MOQ is; it may sound
obvious or incomprehensible, I'll wait for your reaction before
saying more, but experience as value as truth as reality - YES!

> (2) The next one is, is it moral to steal bread (low social Quality)
> if you are about to die of hunger (low biological Quality). the
> problem is that if the biological being dies, so do the social and
> intellectual ones, so wouldn't that me social Quality indirectly
> undermining intellectual?

I think you have got it right: a higher value level is superior, but
when it comes to life or death a living organism - even a human being
- dynamically - may drop down to the bare biological level
(survival). A drowning person will do anything to stay afloat (called
panic in SOM) and yet the higher values are extremely strong and may
override the lower (instincts in SOM) and make the drowning give
his piece of flotsam to the other person ...or the starving to to
give away the last crumb.

> (3) From what I've heard about Quantum Physics it sounds to me like a
> tier below chemical, (Quantum seems to be a completely different level
> obeying completely different laws) this has probably been answered
> long before now but I haven't seen it yet.

The Quantum Physics? Personally I am not fond of notions of levels
below the Inorganic - if that is what you mean? In the beginning of
the discussion there was much ado about it, and it has flared up
from time to time. To me the quantum realm is the fringe zone where
Inorganic order staves off chaos. There are such zones at the bottom
at all levels where it is impossible to tell what is old or new
value: For instance to distinguish between non-living or living,
between living and society and between society and intellect.

> (4) Along the same vein could MoQ be a higher tier (Quality Realizing
> that it exists?) because it seems to be a completely different level
> than intellectual

Great thinking Alex! This idea was forwarded by one other "oldie"
(:-)) Platt Holden and makes a lot of sense, yes, IMHO it is simply
necessary! How the MOQ is to become a new moral latch OF ITSELF
may look like puzzle, I usually just call it "quality" to avoid
paradoxes, but all suggestions are welcome.

> (5) This last one has been puzzling me for a while. How, in a value
> based universe, did SOM even come to exist. to me it's obvious that
> MoQ is of much higher value

This is also highly interesting, and my idea is that the puzzle is
solved by seeing subject-object metaphysics as the Intellectual level
of the MOQ!  I have called it the SOTAQI  (newly changed to SOLAQI
(subject-object thinking (or logic) as Q-Intellect). Seen thus it's
no wonder how SO - M came to be, and how it came to attain the
metaphysical part AS IT IS.

Overall Containment of SOM by MOQ

Remembering my original question as to whether Pirsig's MOQ can be taught to others, or not, we see in this  November 24, 1998 quote, Bodvar also recognizes a Dynamic leap we must make, though static quality is of great import as well. He wrote:

Why not go over the edge and simply define Q-Intellect as SOM (or
stripped of it's M: S-O logic)? That way S-O is truly and permanently
contained by the MOQ. All other definitions are doomed to run into
difficulties. It's inevitable; the top level having a "binge" period
as top notch assuming a posture of being REALITY itself =S-O
Metaphysics! Only recently has one dared to point to its lack of
clothing.

The static intellectual level (Q-Intellect) is NOT the intellect
of SOM. The former is subject-object logic while the latter is
"thinking itself" or "mind". The razor-cut is made in the MOQ
by replacing the S-O division with the DQ-SQ one. After that
everything is changed, no more cutting is needed!!!

Language and MOQ

On December 14, 1998 Bodvar writes:

My picture is that the subject-object dualism was the result of
language's abstraction, and it grew into a static value in its own
right: the Q-Intellect . However, the subject-object METAPHYSICS  -
the idea that that this split is fundamental  - was this level
usurping its position. It is now being rectified.

Intellect is thought ...also. ... DQ used a particular volatile atom to
liberate itself from dead matter; advanced organisms to liberate
itself from the jungle law of life, and the most refined social tool
to liberate itself from communal coercion. If we extrapolate this
will a "movement" beyond Q-Intellect have to be intellectual in
its origin......the most refined abstraction there is!

I see the Q idea to be the first attempt by DQ to free itself from
the dualism of SOM.

Conclusion

Classically, subject/object thinking rejects any idea which doesn't fit preconceived notions of reality, i.e., everything is either a subject or object.
On December 21, 1998 Bodvar wrote:

As I see it the picture is as follows: The Inorganic level "knows" no
division, nor does the Biological or the Social, but the most
advanced tool for perpetuating the common myth - language - triggered
a new Q step. With Q-intellect division appeared: not as a
by-product, no, the Intellectual level knows nothing BUT splitting,
and as long as it reigned unchallenged it was taken for granted that
reality had a "fault"  down its middle. This we call SOM, and in a
SOM context - dependent upon if you were an idealist or a materialist
- evolution was seen either as "matter becoming aware of itself" or
just a complexification of a senseless process.

It may sound like a MOQ counterpart of quantum physics' "strong interpretaion", but all attempts to more reasonable views runs into difficulties. But what I am most  - ahem - proud of is that it gives us back subjects and objects. When we started out it was a witch-hunt for SOM, but it's impossible, it can't be gotten rid of. However, reduced to Q-Intellect  it is "swallowed" by the MOQ. It's a high value, but still a mere static level.

Allow me a rounding off. It's impossible to see a structure from
within. To view Q-intellect from the outside requires a new static
point of view: the Quality idea is Intellect's most advanced "tool"
slowly turning against it's master. What this will develop into I
have no idea, but it is something big. Pirsig said in the letter to
Diana (Newsletters):

> I have mined probably less than one per cent of
> what is there. The best readers will pay minimal
> attention to what I have found and maximal
> attention to what I have missed. That's where
> the excitement is.

Pirsig did not see all the ramifications of his vision  - of course
he didn't  - and there will perhaps be many offshoots of his
idea; Fintan's MoM, various other revisions/additions, my above
SOLAQI are the first examples of such. Fintan, in his usual modest
style, declared his to be a complete new metaphysics, but it is
merely a reshuffling of the static configuration so it is still
MOQ-founded. My idea is conservative regarding number and ranking of
the levels, but most radical regarding Intellect.

Concluding Comments

In another private correspondence with Bodvar, he wrote these words which seem to serve as a fitting conclusion:

In "Lila" Pirsig says that the MOQ doesn't abolish the subject/object division rather contain it inside its own greater system. It does so by calling the two lower value levels (Inorganic and Biological) "objective" and the two upper (Social and Intellectual) "subjective". Although I understand this "transformation" it might convey an impression of a S/O (mind/matter) split between levels, rather than the split being the pattern of one level alone. The latter having the virtue of both stripping the subject/object division of its METAPHYSICAL quality while simultaneously making it into the highest value pattern, only subordinate to Dynamic Quality itself. For how can we renounce the value of (distinguishing between) the subjective and the objective and go on being civilized?

I also feel that Pirsig really says the very same thing as SOLAQI at various instances. For example, in a letter (published by Doug Renselle) where Pirsig comments on parts of a book on quantum physics by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat:

(Pirsig's comments [inserted into d'Espagnat's text] in bold italics.)

[d'Espagnat] Proposition (v). What we presently know does
contradict, however,  the assumption that reality as defined above
coincides in every  respect with empirical reality....

 [Pirsig] In the MOQ Dynamic Quality is the  fundamental
empirical reality. By "empirical reality" we mean  here a
description How can empirical reality be a description?  This
seems to me to be a blunder. The positivists must have  him
confused

(d'Espagnat cntd.)... which is made in terms of particles, fields,
classical  physical objects, and so on, and in which individual
attributes  appear. In the last resort the circumstance that no such
description  coincides with reality is due, as we saw, to the fact
that in  quantum physics this description unavoidably disregards
the  specificity and locality of the states of consciousness.

(Pirsig) Now he is  off into the usual subject-object confusion.
The reason that no  description coincides with reality is that
the "reality" he refers  to is just another description. It is just
one intellectualization combating another intellectualization.

(d'Espagnat cntd) Thus it seems that the  least unsatisfactory
image we can form of reality is one in which  physical (i.e.,
empirical) reality and consciousness are not, as yet,  differentiated.
This is, therefore, what we suggest.

(Pirsig) Here he arrives  bizarrely, from false premises, at an
MOQ conclusion.

[End of quote]

Pirsig asks: "In the MOQ Dynamic Quality is the fundamental empirical reality.....How can empirical reality be a description"? That is of course correct; DQ escapes all definitions, but WHEN it manifests as the known static hierarchy of levels (and we only know the manifestations) the Intellectual level IS DESCRIPTION (objectivization).

What d'Espagnat calls: particles, fields, objects, etc., are intellectual patterns, and when Pirsig accuses him of being 'off into the usual subject-object confusion' he truly is. The SOM confusion is the fallacy of intellect believing its subject/object split to be "the world order". And look to what Pirsig says next:

"The reason that no description coincides with reality is that the "reality" he refers to is just another description. It is just one intellectualization combating another intellectualization."

In other words, when d'Espagnat is in SOM he is where intellectualizations combat each other, i.e., the Intellectual level!!. Perhaps it can be interpreted as SOM being one pattern within intellect, and that MOQ is another pattern, but I feel that it turns Q-intellect into MIND which brings SOM back in force. What is not inside such an intellect? Even the MOQ is, and that raises serious trouble!

My Concluding Comments

Hopefully I have helped to shed some little light upon SOLAQI here and I thank you all for reading. As always, comments are appreciated.

Links

Part I

Part II

Perceptions of Quality

Last updated 11/6/99