MARCO ACCEPTS THE CONCLUSION OF ROGER, AND HOPES ALSO THAT PLATT AND
DANILA DO AGREE.
Roger, Danila, Platt and MD
Roger, let me say that your post has been for me a sort of Christmas
present!
==> a. Picasso
ROG:
I concede! He [Picasso] is an intellectual. Seriously.
MARCO:
:-)
==> b. HQE
MARCO (previous):
IMO RT is the process by which DQ becomes sq, at every level. RT is not
merely
intellectual: we could say there's an intellectual rt, a social rt, a
biological rt and even (maybe) an inorganic rt.
ROG:
I will stick with "High Quality Endeavor." I agree that HQE leads to
creative exploration of quality.
MARCO:
HQE. Sounds good.
==> c. The code of ART
MARCO (previous):
Bur ART is human. Its role can be social (the Colosseum). Can it be also
intellectual? It depends on what we call "intellect". The Aristotle's
mistake
you mention is, IMO, that he has subordinated Good within the scientific
truth.
That is, he considered the scientific truth as equivalent to the whole
intellect. The
correction I suggest, according to my comprehension of the MOQ, is to
make it possible
for the scientific method to grant equal dignity to art.
ROG:
???? Why do you want scientific methodology to "grant equal dignity to
art?"
We already agreed it is artistic whether they grant it or not.
MARCO:
'cause they seem to have the world in their hand. Only when they finally
recognize they must be mainly artists, i.e. seekers of beauty, my
prophecy will be verified:
"You have right to a lawyer", shouts the policeman.
"You have right to the beauty" will shout the intellectual.
so that, just like policemen are socially focused but they have to
ensure fundamental intellectual values (as human rights), likewise one
day intellectuals/artists will have to ensure fundamental 5th level
values (beauty). I think Platt will like these words! In fact, I'm now
on the position that the "code of art", carrier of beauty, is the very
refined set of patterns for the new level. But it is, as "code",
completely carried by intellectual/artistic patterns, just like the code
of life is carried by inorganic DNA. Finally I have a sort of complete
map of codes and levels! A sort of GENOMA OF QUALITY.
==> d. The Sophist
MARCO (previous):
This purpose is to increase the knowledge of universe, to advance the
horizon line
towards the unknown. This "mission" was given originally by society to
science, in
order to increase the social power. Then science saw it was good, and
transformed this
"mission" into a purpose of its own. Definitely this purpose is, as we
well
know, evolve towards excellence.
ROG:
Yuck. More anthropomorphizing! "One day,science woke up and got out of
bed
and ate scrambled eggs and was jealous of art and"....... I know I sound
like
a broken record, but I find this treating the levels as personified
Greek
Gods is of little value and much misinterpretation (and yes, I know
Pirsig
engaged in this rhetorical approach).
MARCO:
Not only Pirsig... Plato also! However I'm a Sophist, so you will
forgive me! :-) You are right, but this "method", far from being
scientific and rational, allows to explain a point in few lines. If I
try to express the same point from a logical/scientific/historical
viewpoint, I must write a treatise...
==> e. Simplifications
MARCO (previous):
And also Pirsig shows that science hardly admits that this universe it
studies is not merely made of substance, particles, energy, proteins,
cells, and so on...
Emotions, "giants", dreams, ideas, imagination, ghosts, states of
mind...
are as real as "matter". Even more real than matter, as they are made of
higher
quality patterns.
ROG:
Yes. I've already agreed to all this. I will, however suggest that
matter
is made of the same patterns as the others. All are simplifications or
abstractions derived from the dynamic flow of experience.
MARCO:
I fear that if I open this pan, we will have another enormous
discussion! Not now...
==> f. Italy and America
MARCO (previous):
Dario Fo has been ostracized by the "social" media, like the TV, for his
ideas and message. He is manifestly a Marxist. His art is both beautiful
and
intellectual. Surely he is not a scientist. So, I conclude, there's a
way to be
intellectual even without a scientific method.
ROG:
But I bet he is loved and adored by the 'liberal" SOCIAL set. Come to
America sometime. Here the media is liberal. (Note a basic disagreement
with
JoVo's comment a while back that liberal =intellectual and social =
conservative. They are both social parties, though I may agree that
liberals
tend to have more faith in intellectual ideas. Personally, I'm not sure
if
this faith is very intellectual though. Seems we need more healthy
intellectual scepticism on many of these so-called intellectual
solutions --
and critical scepticism IS IMO intellectual)
MARCO:
(I agree with you about JoVo's comment).
I'd like to go there. Surely one day, it's a must. I hoped in the MOQ
conference (as good occasion) but its first supporter, Rich, decided
diversely (his last post is a sort of mystery to me).
I'm sure that American media are very liberal, even if I think they are
more slave of the market than here. Maybe they are liberal just 'cause
they have liberal readers as target. In Kundera's words, a sort of
"Kitsch of Liberalism".
Actually, here the conformism and the fear for every possible dynamic
input are huge. So you see I'm very critic also against Italy, and not
only against America!
However, we also have liberal media, to a certain extent today. The
ostracism I mentioned was in the sixties and seventies, when we had one
only one public TV channel, and when our secret services used to put
bombs everywhere, just to push people to the request for a stronger
government, against any possible "modernism". By the way, it's commonly
known here that the CIA was in agreement on this, but the fear for
communism originated such crimes! On the other side, we had also
communist terrorists, partly coming from the 1968 movements. And
probably financed by the Soviet Union.
Terrible years.. the only thing I'm proud of, is that we have been able
to come out from those times without the death penalty. So that today
many of those terrorists in jails are the firsts in admitting their
mistakes. If the state had killed them, probably they would have become
heroes.
==> g. Social and intellectual cookies
MARCO (pervious):
...social patterns have the original basic purpose to improve the
possibilities of the
biological individuals; they are made of those emotions which make it
valuable the social interaction among biological beings. Intellectual
patterns have the
basic purpose to increase the knowledge of universe; they are made of a
socially
shareable code and make it possible the communication of a description
of reality.
[...]
A childish request for cookies is a "thing". It is social if it's merely
a
request for the mother's attention. It is biological if it's real
hunger. It is
intellectual if the kid is a genius and well knows how many calories has
to eat everyday
in order to survive.
ROGER:
You really do seem to focus on intent.
[...]
OK. I would sort it as:
The request for a cookie is social -- period.
Desire for a cookie is primarily biological.
Analysis of a cookie's chemical composition is intellectual.
The art of baking a cookie is artistic (though not very intellectual)
The art of truly savoring a cookie could also be artistic.
[...] but my main question is with your
definition of the intellectual level and how it pertains to these
examples.
Is requesting a cookie an example of "take a small piece of DQ and put
it
into a coded and socially shareable form?" If not, why? If so, why the
caveats that some requests are intellectual and others aren't. I need
clarification here.
[ Sorry, I see below that you do clarify this, but I left
it here so you can see how my response progresses]
[...]
Intellectual patterns are of necessity socially shareable, but this is
not their defining characteristic.
MARCO (previous):
Agree. It's a necessary but insufficient condition. The defining
characteristic is in their purpose: they must be created/used in order
to investigate reality.
ROGER:
Oops! I see now that you have refined your view too! Sorry. I now
accept
your definition as fully reasonable. Please disregard some of my
earlier
criticisms.
[...]
I tentatively agree with the definition of intellectual patterns as
"High
Quality socially-shareable endeavors to investigate reality." Do you
accept
this too? Science and math and logic and opera and rhetoric are all
therefore different techniques or methodologies of exploration and
sharing. I
will accept your division based on intent with the additional
clarification
that there are different methodologies or techniques to achieve or
pursue
this goal.
MARCO:
Do you know the mot: "before starting to speak, please ensure the brain
is connected". I think it explains my point about the difference
between social and intellectual patterns.
Actually, my complete definition of intellectual patterns has always
been "pieces of DQ turned BY INTELLIGENCE into a coded and socially
shareable form". IMO intelligence, as the ability to READ INTO (confront
my last post to Danila ) makes the difference. Maybe I did not
emphasized it enough.
About the focus on intent, IMO if we look at intelligence as tool, we
put the focus also on the method.
So my latest version is: "DQ investigated by means of intelligence and
coded into a socially shareable form". It seems similar to yours. But
I'll offer a new one below, as compendium of both.
==> h. The intellectual/artistic level.
MARCO (previous):
Logic (and science) is a good tool (not truth itself) for the
investigation of some
aspects of reality: this has been the mistake of Aristotle. IMO the art
of
painters and dramatists can be a good tool for the investigation of
other aspects of
reality.
IMO There's no hierarchy of science over art, or of art over science,
within
the intellectual level.
ROGER:
Agreed. I am starting to think it makes more sense to view intellect as
a
particular subset of Art defined by its methodology and purpose. I will
go
along with you now that you can place intellectual methodologies that
are
other-than-scientific too. Composition, rhetoric, opera, and so on. I
may
not have come to this conclusion without this discussion though, so I
thank
you very much. I add that my acceptance is tentative. Consider it a
trial
theory. As I think you will notice, I try to explore new views. Adopt
theories and see if they make sense and hold them up to logical and
other
aesthetic requirements. (Sometimes they do, often they don't)
MARCO:
Wise and dynamic principles.
About the name of the level, following the Danila's concept of
"Intellect" as an insufficient term to define this level we are talking
about, I'm starting to think it could work to call the levels simply by
numbers. So that we will have a perfect definition (4th level) that does
not say anything! :-)
Getting more serious, I don't see particular problems in identifying
"intellectual" also the artistic investigation of reality. After all,
also other MOQ key words (morality, quality, society...) are not exactly
matching the common usage: the use to put a "Q-" before those words
(Q-Intellect, Q-society) is due to this fact. So I've no problem if
Q-Intellect is not exactly like the Intellect of dictionaries.
Danila offered the "official" definition of intellect:
-------
"1a. The power or faculty of knowing as
distinguished from the power to feel and to will.
1b. Aristotelianism: passive reason, active reason;
1c. Scholasticism: the faculty of penetrating appearances and getting
at the substance through abstraction from and elimination of the
individual;
1d. Thomism: the receptive faculty of cognition that makes apprehensible
the phantasma or intelligible forms, also the aspect of the soul that is
immortal and constitutes the active
power of thought".
-------
Who knows? Maybe one day we will read:
1e. MOQism: the High Quality Endeavor to investigate reality by means
of intelligence, and create coded pattern in order to share socially the
results of the investigation.
:-)
This is my (definitive ?) definition of intellect.
Back to the level, we could also call it the artistic/intellectual
level, so that no misunderstanding will come. By the way, this
definition was offered by John Beasley in his essay: "Quality and
Intelligence".
He wrote:
---------------------
"The Artistic/Intellectual Level
[...] Indeed, it is debatable just what fits within this level. Pirsig
clearly prefers to limit this level to ideas and the realm of the
intellect, though as we saw above he has some vague suggestion about 'a
code of art' which he seems to think fits more with dynamic quality as
distinct from the quality he describes at the intellectual level. As I
have already made clear, I believe dynamic quality is experienced
differently at the biological, social and intellectual levels, with
perhaps the most profound level being the biological, for this is where
the encounter with quality occurs most directly in attending to here and
now experience.
[...]
That dynamic quality can be encountered at the intellectual level is to
me indisputable. But it is dependant upon knowledge, education, training
and experience. To me, a new proof for a complex mathematical problem is
just a series of meaningless marks on a blackboard. To a mathematician
they have meaning, and can be deciphered. To the elite mathematician,
though, there is a dynamic excitement in grasping the elegance of the
formulation that is totally inaccessible to all who lack his level of
knowledge and discernment. The dynamic experience is limited to those
equipped to discern it.
The situation is similar with art. The dynamic quality of a work of art
is not accessible to everyone. Only those with an appropriate cultural
background, familiar with the trends in the art world that have led up
to this new creation, are likely to find it dynamic. So Van Gogh's
paintings were almost totally ignored in his own lifetime, yet today
businessmen vie to acquire one at astronomical prices. It is quite
possible that the most outstanding works of art being produced are
totally ignored by the critics and curators of the art world, just
because they take too bold a leap from the familiar, though given the
frantic search for any difference amongst artists they are perhaps less
likely to be ignored in our era than previously".
-------------
There are differences between his points and what we have reached here
recently, but there's also a certain contiguity. It's a pity he is not
on the lists anymore!
==> j. - The end?
MARCO again to my point:
>Intellectual patterns are differentiated by their methodology.
I substitute method with technique (IMO method is a technique).
Technique is
a tool to refine patterns. It can distinguish good patterns from bad
patterns.
Method does not create patterns.
ROG:
Agree strongly. Certain lower quality patterns are identified,
'refined'
and/or eliminated according to the methodology/technique. I like this
concept. Seems very high quality.
Are we ready to wrap up our discussion? Thanks again, this one has been
first class!
MARCO:
Yes, I guess. It's nice to see that we started from Democracy last
September and we arrive here. Thanks for all. And thanks also to Platt,
Danila, Elephant, Bo, JoVo and all the other MDers interested by these
posts. Have you all an HQ new year.
Marco.
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