"It seems that the quality of "understanding" - which is what this discussion is effectively all about - is something very mysterious. Consequently, any theory of the physical world which is capable of accommodating beings that are capable of genuine understanding must itself be in a position to cope with such subtleties." - Roger Penrose
 

A Beginning - Julian Jaynes and MOQ

According to Robert Pirsig, emergence of subject/object thinking, and consequently our scientific method, would appear to have occurred in ancient Greece. Julian Jaynes has written a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which also points to that time as an evolutionary jump in human perception of self. Bodvar Skutvik discusses this here:

I know Julian Jaynes work (from Colin Wilson's preoccupation with the
split-brain theory) and after reading LILA for the first time I wrote
to Pirsig to ask if the emergence of Intellect (of MOQ) could be seen
in such a context, and he replied:

 (quote)...I haven't read Julian Jaynes' book but what I heard of it
seems to match the Metaphysics of Quality exactly."..(unquote)

Like Platt I admit that it difficult to visualise a time when the
concept of self was weak or lacking, but Jaynes entertains this idea
and Maggie will know that his claim is that preconscious experience
was no Cartesian I-think-therefore-I-am, but "voices from the gods".
About this Pirsig said in the same letter:

(quote)...I don't know if they were more in touch with Dynamic
Quality, but certainly they were less in touch with the modern
intellectual pattern that declare those voices to be illegal. It is
the easiest thing in the world to call a thought a "voice". I think
this is what the ancients did and this is in fact done in the last
chapter of Lila. But Phaedrus is aware that the doll's voice is not
vibrating any air molecules around his ears, and this distinction I
think it's best not to blur, if only to keep the psychiatrists away."
(unquote)

The "bicameral" bit is the brain's two halves communicating by a giant
nerve bundle which, which when severed (as in surgery to cure
epilepsy), causes a person to become two: one intellectual and one
artist! The first one dominating "awareness", but the second
marking its existence through bodily reactions.

Finally, look to this passage in the same letter from Pirsig

(quote) ...."The emergence of the intellectual level is most closely
associated in my mind with the ancient Greek philosophers and
particularly Socrates who continually pitted truth-seeking against
social conformity. This seems why they killed him"...(unquote)

Isn't this also the emergence of subject/object metaphysics?

- Bodvar Skutvik (Date unknown)
 

Julian Jaynes postulates in his book that physical change in humankind's brains and subsequent conception of self apart from environment occurred approximately around 750 b.c., give or take a generation or two, coinciding nicely with Pirsig's theory. There are several troubling aspects to Jaynes' theories in light of recent research on ways our brains operate, however. As Pirsig points out, rather than physical changes in our brains taking place approximately 2500 years ago, it seems  more probable that these changes were cultural. Conventional science cannot account for Dynamic cultural changes and instead looks for physical proofs, objective verifications.

In Lila, Pirsig talks of a "green sun" and how he never saw one until he read a book on yachting and became aware that such things existed. In similar fashion, intellect emerged with awareness of truth contrasting and contradicting social conformity. Socrates in particular was instrumental in raising intellectual truth over social truth, and thus those inner voices once heard and thought to be that of God, became subjective in quality and inferior to objective cultural truth.

A New Name

In September, 1998, moq_discuss was born as an unmoderated forum and discussions surrounding Bodvar's SOTAQI idea continued. In this September 15 post, Bodvar wrote:

Platt pointed to my idea of Subject-Object thinking as Q-Intellect
(SOTAQI): which is an effort to create a SOM-MOQ transformator.
Me-ness and other-ness is a static latch and along with it came the
free-will riddle. Diana is correct when she says: ...."It is I the
subject that has free will...etc. and ..." 'Man makes choices'  is
pure SOM".... Exactly, but if subject-object 'thinking/logic' is
viewed as a mere static step - not the whole Q-reality itself - the
riddle is solved.... IMHO.

Later in September, Bodvar wrote:

I believe that Jonathan wants to incorporate the whole 'mental
activity' into his model of the Q-intellect while I maintain that it
is limited to SO-logic (REASON). 'Mental activity' at the Social
level is EMOTION and at the Biological level - SENSATION. That way SO
becomes a Q-stage, no more no less, and solidly incorporated into the
MOQ.

You all know the so-called strong interpretation of Quantum mech. It
has no connection to classical physics except through a mathematical
transformation. In all humbleness do I call the SOTAQI a strong
interpretation of Quality Metaphysics: esoteric, but unassailable.
The MOQ now needs a safe base from where it can operate unmolested.

Perhaps all are different limbs of the MIND platypus, but
first to this sentence: "  .....Pirsig has already given us the idea
that consciousness is value". Not to pick nits, but his idea is that
EXPERIENCE is value. Consciousness and awareness are terms not found
in LILA  as far as I know. Experience is all there is at all levels,
while the said terms have an unmistakenly "mind" load. I would say
that consciousness is always SELF-CONSCIOUS and awareness always
SELF-AWARE (a subject different from objective environment) so
if my SOTAQI holds that is Intellect. And it's obvious; Q-intellect
always holds up the worth of individual self (against the diffuse
many of Q-society) and as intellect is our usual point of view;
no wonder that personal worth and integrity ranks high.

And yet, in spite of being the highest static value, Q-intellect is
subordinate to Dynamic Quality, demonstrated in moments of
ecstasy when self vanishes. Our great fear - losing ourselves -
becomes the highest goal; a strange contradiction that has no
explanation in SOM, but is the most natural thing in the MOQ
(Dynamic Quality is identical to religious mysticism. LILA
p.381)

Yes, Kantian experience - which I take to be equal to awareness - is
dependent upon the time/space/causation (TSC) framework that is 100%
true. Yes, TSC IS experience in the SOM (mind) sense, but MOQ's claim
is that experience=value and that shifts the ground totally. If you
have followed my SOTAQI idea and drop the Intellect=mind (-as-
different-from-matter) idea and equalize Q-Intellect with
subject-object thinking (awareness of self as subject (different from
objects [other]) then time, space and causation can be seen as the
first SO ideas that arose intricately interwoven with language and
became the cornerstones upon which the intellectual edifice rose
......to the height of a skyscraper; it became the whole of reality:
A METAPHYSICS!!!!

This is in SOM-lingo called "ability to think", "awareness",
"sentience" or "consciousness", all with a ring of absolute to them
....knowledge of good and evil.... in religious terms", but the
Q-metaphysics takes it down a notch and tucks it in under itself. As
the top static level admittedly, but subservient to the overall
Quality system.

Emergence of Intellect

Digressing momentarily to October 2, 1998, Bodvar writes:

Of course, language and its structure is immensely older than early
Greek philosophy. If I were daft enough to believe otherwise..ugh! No,
my approach is that language was the social "carbon" that Dynamic
Quality used as a vehicle to free evolution from the Social laws, in
the same way as Inorganic carbon was the vehicle of Life. The picture
as I see it ....in broad strokes.

There must have been a time, millions of years ago,
when the proto-humans were little more than animals; living in tribes
and/or families, but without language as we know it, which is to say:
Q-intellect had not emerged! After aeons (for reasons that is a
mystery in itself) the brain's neural complexity had grown to
proportions that enabled them to use abstract symbols that could be
manipulated by rules of grammar. At first it wasn't much, nothing
like SOM's "awakening to consciousness" or the biblical "eating of
the tree of knowledge". Language was wholly "in the service" of
Society.

NB! You probably want to call this "thinking" and thinking it was,
but once we use that term some internal switch is thrown and we are
in SOM's grip. That's why I strive to describe it differently.

And over the millennia the Social level made use of this new tool to
grow ever more complex structures cemented by the common language
mediated mythology of divine origin and guidance. Yet, language was
like the sorcerer's apprentice; it knew the start formula, but not
how to stop. It facilitated improvements by spreading of knowledge
and thereby prosperity but also something unheard of before: thinkers
who used language to see themselves as independent of their
community's strictures; the IDEA of a subject self of more value than
society (other) was born. If we call it objectivization or
subjectivization is the same; the two are always in step...and the
rest is history.

With the early Greek philosophers, the social reality [of gods with a
special connection to the people] gave way to the new myth of
objectivity, truth etc.,  and the world as we Westerns know it was
born: Intellect had emerged. Not to instant dominance -  through
the events described in LILA its struggle with Society is told, and
this goes on at a fierce pace in f ex. Islamic culture (which is our
Semitic twins) while - according to Pirsig - the East has resolved
the intellect/society conflict long ago.

Language

Language, as a vehicle of communication between members of a group, is extremely ancient. Only recently has language become a tool for philosophy in our Western culture and given rise to a subject/object-based metaphysics.

On October 20, 1998 Bodvar wrote:
 

Anyway, one final word: Look how the notion of Q-Intellect as
"thinking itself" keeps messing up the MOQ. If so, everything that
crosses our mind is supposed to be superior value!! Nothing
can be more confusing and I entreat you (all) to look into my SOTAQI
and try to understand what it says. Q-Intellect's value (in the
overall MOQ picture) is the ability  - by way of language -  to
visualize a subject as different from an object, from this base a
host of derivative values have grown: all more or less centred on the
worth of the individual.

But "thinking itself" Nope! There is a lot of thinking, speaking
and writing  going on to forward social value - as demonstrated
in the quoted passages above.

SO -M thinking should be avoided, but not S-O thinking (or logic) .
You will possibly have heard of my idea that subject-object thinking
is MOQ's intellectual level. Accordingly S-O is no evil, but the
highest static value level there is. ........if the M part of it can
be dropped.

But what about the M, can it be removed?  In my opinion yes, because
it has been a hoax all the time. The elders will possibly wince if I
start on the whole string of evidence, but shortly - and by God this
is what brought us to the MOQ in the first place - the world view
based on the SOM is rotten through and through.

Up through the ages the thinkers' efforts to overcome the SOM
paradoxes has ended in frustration, because not until Pirsig has a
complete replacement been offered, and only now is it possible to
see how Q-Intellect as the top level naturally tried to make itself
ALL OF THE WORLD (So did the Social level in its time and so did the
Biological and the Inorganic) ALL levels were once the summit from
where reality was viewed!!

While the SOM falsely reigned there was nothing outside the
subject-object reality, but now there is Dynamic Quality and once
that context is seen the M drops away: Intellect - however powerful,
important and GOOD - is subordinate to the overall QUALITY.
Conclusion: Subject-object thinking is valuable, it is what makes
humans human and what has brought civilization to the point is
has achieved, but after Pirsig's breakthrough its power is broken
(like the Brujo priests').

On October

Before continuing into November discussions in Part III, I would like to slightly revise our set of SOLAQI heuristics from Part I. There are ten:

Heuristics

1. Quantum reality is still generally considered objective.

2. There must be modes of contingency aiming at unambiguous communication between observers taken as complete unitary event.

3. Unambiguous communications are intellectual patterns of value in Pirsig's MOQ, while classically it is held that objective language is that mode of contingency.

4. In "mind" these patterns meet, if "mind" is defined from MOQ point of view.

5. As long as reality is described objectively, for all intents and purposes Quality intellect and subject/object thinking are identical.

6. SOLAQI is anthropocentric if viewed from SOM. So far as we know, only human beings possess means of utilizing SOLAQI but this is not necessarily so if Quality-centered universe is considered.

7.  SOLAQI may not necessarily mean "ability to think" but rather thinking itself as we humans relate to each other.

8. Thinking is not ghostly objectified abstractions seen apart from subjective observers but rather manipulated static quality patterns of value just as real as rock.

9. These static quality intellectual patterns of value depend on subjectively describing objective reality in unambiguous terms to avoid language traps.

10. SOLAQI acts as transformative agent from subject/object logic to Pirsig's MOQ.

Conclusion

After discussions with Bodvar, I now realize his SOLAQI is not necessarily anthropocentric, humanistically oriented, if viewed from prospective of Quality as experience. Therefore, I have revised heuristic # 6 to reflect that.

Thank you for reading.
 
 

Part I

Part III

Perceptions of Quality