Hi, Bo and all participants,
>Denis, I invest so much in talking to you because you (almost)
>understand,
I'm trying, but I think we must BOTH misunderstand one another. At least, I
cannot understand how you can keep up the SOLAQI despite all the criticism
it has generated. Either you do not understand the critiques or your immune
system filters them out. I've answered your "logical paradox" attack, your
"all-pervasive mind/consciousness" attack, your "all in language" attack,
but I fail to see where you've TRIED to answer my criticism against the
impossibility of arguing against a SOLAQI MOQ (since by claiming a new level
for itself it refutes all "lower-level" refutations), or that the MOQ is an
ALTERNATIVE to SOM, which logically cripples your claim that S/O-Logic is
Q-Intellect (and clearly places MOQ at the intellectual level).
So I must chastise you once again for not making enough effort to get
yourself
understood. Please, no more definitive statements, Bo !
>and I now zoom in on this part of your last message
>because it's the language issue which is the key.
Isn't it always ? ;)
>> Saying that everything is Language (which I hope is now clear is NOT
>> my stance) has its own problems,
>
>No cheekiness but its not clear at all, to the contrary it's only too
>clear that once you enter the language "black hole" nothing can be
>kept outside of it. You say it has problems. Ha! It's the
>understatement of the year. Look, language is another facet of the
>MIND spectre and - IN A SOM CONTEXT - it is easy to prove that
>everything is mind ...or language, I don't start on the proof because
>you know philosophy's history (the Empiricists: Berkeley and
>Hobbes ....and Kant who believed he had saved something from the
>whirlpool)
In a SOM context (where truth is absolute), you end up gnawing at yourself
in endless logical loops of definition. That is agreed on.
But my point (which I should have made clearer from the start) is simply to
state that in no way does the MOQ completely escape from this predicament by
the simple virtue of having an undefined central term, or basing itself upon
a "pre-intellectual awareness" of the world. When all is said and done, the
MOQ consist of a number of words open to interpretation, and that's all.
Once we follow Pirsig toward the QUALITY idea (pre-intellectual awareness
which creates both observer and observed), it soon becomes clear that we are
finally leaving the world of absolute beliefs (since the Absolute is
pre-intellectual). And the next step, which consists in CHOOSING the best
first division of Undefined Reality (Quality), is largely dependent upon the
questions one asks. Pirsig wondered about how Goodness had been replaced by
Truth as the new absolute, and therefore his questions lean toward a
definition (or at least a description) of Goodness. "Why doesn't everybody
agree on what's good ?", "What's a moral conflict ?", "What is value ?",
etc.
But as he said himself, there were endless ways of making this first
analytical cut. IOW, while Pirsig's MOQ is certainly elegant and provide
some good answers, it's not the be-all and end-all of intellectual
achievement (fortunately). Quality, understood as Goodness, whether Expected
or Unexpected, is therefore but a "sample" of the possible intellectual
grasps of QUALITY. Platt here will probably say that "to choose" is to make
a judgment of value, which therefore supports the MOQ. But as Struan said,
this argument is circular, and therefore it doesn't say more than "the MOQ
is self-coherent" (see my exchanges with Platt about tautology and circular
logic). This is certainly an indication of high intellectual quality, but
nothing more.
So if you understand the MOQ place in the overall Q-Intellect, its
importance is great, but it's still a lesser part of the overall Quality
(Undifferentiated Reality). If you take it to be a Quality-level, you've
escaped the black hole of Language by a kind of religious conversion, but
not by a higher-quality intellectual stance. You've just named your new
absolute belief "Quality", defined how it could be attained ("Accept the MOQ
!"), and from there you just have to refuse further criticisms by calling
them "SOMish". The parallel between this and "accepting Jesus in your heart"
is all too striking to be missed.
While I agree with Platt that maps are useful, that the MOQ is one of the
best, and that it definitely constitutes a new level in Man's intellectual
development (or rather, a new incarnation of the vision-logic level, to
borrow another Wilberianism), your absolutist take on it worries me a lot,
Bodvar. I seems to me that you are getting far too attached to mere words
and concepts, and that in the process you are missing the moon they are
pointing at.
Have you got any idea what I'm talking about ?
>> the worst of which being that since
>> in Language everything is context-bound to the nth level (words only
>> mean something in the context of other words, ad infinitum), we have
>> entered a world of total subjectivity and meaninglessness. It is
>> madness incarnate, IMHO.
>
>YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>That's the very point. This was what drove P. of ZAMM nuts (who at
>that time was a somist, what else could he be?). As you so aptly
>say: "...a world of total subjectivity and meaninglessness", but this
>is the inevitable conclusion if an analytical mind goes the SOM
>path all the way, and P. was a fanatical such, he didn't have the
>good sense to back off. OTOH, only by going it all the way could
>he obtain the QUALITY view. It cost him a lot. I know because I
>was on the same path once, but turned and ran and remained in
>limbo for more than ten years when I didn't dare think along those
>lines for fear of the "vastation". Encountering Pirsig's ZAMM and
>finding another person who had had the same experience ....and
>hinted at a solution was salvation for me.
I'm pleased to see you agree with me on what's the problem in SOM, but again
when I accuse the MOQ of having the same problem (its intellectual status,
which leads to countless possible views of varying quality) you counter by
evasive statements about how it was hard for Pirsig to get a QUALITY view
(with no explications forthcoming about what it could possibly consist of)
and how you had the same kind of experience.
What I am supposed to do with that, Bo ?
Are we back at the beginning, when I asked you for fully-fleshed answers,
and not just ghostly arguments that disperse as soon as you blow on them ?
You know I won't settle for that, old pal ! :)
>Maybe Wilber also has had this vision, but like me he must have
>turned back too early and thereby created a half-way "spiritual"
>perverted MoQ.
A half-way, "spiritual", perverted MoQ ? Pfew, all that ? Are you sure it
doesn't cause cancer, too ? ;)
Bo, your fanaticism is showing. Wilber's "four quadrant" model has many
flaws and problems, but it offers some good answers too. While the
mind/matter gap is far from being bridged (because he keeps the S/O split as
fundamental), he has most interesting ideas about how patterns of value (his
"holons") are formed and articulate themselves. Also, the idea that the
individuals that constitute a society might show a higher (or lower) level
of development than the society itself (which I've seen you've recently
adopted) comes from him, so at least be kind to your sources... ;)
As to his interest in spirituality (which you derisively bracket), I find it
most interesting, and cannot see how it could be held against his system.
After all, Pirsig definitely wrote about such experiences in ZAMM and
'Lila', and held the people attaining such realisation to be of surpassing
moral excellence.
I think it would be more constructive to use Wilber's work to add some flesh
on the MOQ skinny frame, rather than dismiss it as "perverted", simply
because he could not see any escape from the S/O trap before the higher
stages of consciousness (and spare me the "mind" rebuffal, please) which
Pirsig briefly describes in ZAMM. Wilber is climbing to the high country of
the mind by another side of the mountain, but I think we can all meet in
peace, up there.
>> SOM brought about the notion of a meaning no longer defined by
>> society, but it still was meaningful (if objectively true). With
>> "vision-logic" comes a meaning no longer defined by society, and no
>> longer restricted by the belief in an absolute truth (there is no
>> "true" meaning). Unfortunately, this is often translated into "there's
>> no meaning". At all.
>
>Correct, but this is seen from the MoQ.
So I *have* a MOQ perspective, after all ? ;)
>Before Pirsig there was no
>SOM - it was REALITY itself. Only now are we able to see it the
>way you describe it, but Denis mon ami, don't you see that you
>have reached exactly the same approach as myself: "....SOM
>brought about the notion of a meaning no longer defined by
>society". If SOM is what superseded Q-society it HAS TO BE Q-
>intellect. Voila! You are a solaqist too.
But I'll point you back to your "paint-myself-in-the-corner" realisation of
the 8/12/2001 post that this epiphany (that *meaning* is no longer defined
by society but by an intellectual elite) was not unique or limited to the
western world. This is only the story of how the "SOM flavor" of Intellect
came to dominate the WESTERN world, but it doesn't make SOM an obligatory
step toward your 5th level (as the story of Eastern thought amply
demonstrates). Intellect seems to have come under more than one guise across
the world and ages.
So I'm sorry, but I'll decline the SOLAQI award. :(
In fact, the more I think about it the more I think this whole story of
society defining meaning seems absurd. It's not society that creates
stories, it's people, individuals of flesh and blood. Whether they impose it
from a position of social authority or not is one thing, but it's not the
social position that creates the story, it's the person behind that position
who does.
You're saying, "did anyone ever wondered if this was true or just stories
?", and draw the line between social level and intellectual level there. I
think you're misapplying that distinction. A society has no intelligence of
its own, no will and no imagination. So societies never "wonder if their
stories are true". People do. When people, whatever society they live in,
start asking themselves such questions, then their intellectual patterns can
be said to have established moral dominance over their social ones. But a
society only promotes such intellectual patterns when this intellectual
elite has reached a position of social dominance. And it enforces these new
intellectual patterns THROUGH SOCIAL PATTERNS, by making them the new dogma.
What else was Pirsig saying in ZAMM when he compared the psychiatrists to
the inquisitors of old ?
Which brings us to the next realisation : the previous stories were
INTELLECTUAL PATTERNS too. The Intellect created the Gods of old just as it
has created SOM and MOQ. All stories are intellectual patterns. They only
differ in aim and quality.
The Renaissance, building on Plato and Aristotle, asked for evidence for its
new metaphysics. New rules were layed out and refined for how stories were
to be created (the birth of the scientific method), and the power to judge
them was slowly pulled from the hands of the Church towards those of the
scientists. And this was good, and better. And further good (and evil, of
course) unfurled from it. Wilber has interesting thoughts on the matter, but
that will wait for another post.
My personal take on the social level, as you know, is that it is composed of
patterns of behaviour (social hierarchy and interaction, customs, taboos,
etc.).
Therefore, what new stories fight against is old stories, but when they
concern the social level, they in turn create new behaviours (or perhaps are
created alongside them) that fight the old behaviours. The intellectual
fight is a "view" (or translation) of the social one. It's the story of the
fight, which is a fight in itself. In human societies, this fight is fought
with rhetorics as much as with ostracism and scorn (and sometimes even
force). This "all-levels" approach is, I believe, typical of humans, who are
the only "four-levelled" beings on Earth.
>OK, "Vision-logic" may be Pirsig's fourth moral code, my 5th level,
>or Platt's "Aesthetic level", but "mind's eye" introduces the
>mind/matter (S/O) spectre again.
How ? Why ? Once again you do not deign to give some weight to your
criticisms, Bo (and BTW, I said "Eye of Reality", not "mind's eye").
OTOH, I think you are right that the fourth moral code of Pirsig, your fifth
level and Platt's "Aesthetic level" are just different names for
vision-logic. We might not always give the same definition, mainly because
we all climbed the intellectual mountain by different trails, but I think
the "QUALITY view" you're talking about (the experience of it, not its
definition) is the same "Eye of Reality" I'm talking about. We just disagree
on how the rest is articulated around it.
>
>> And this is the dead end of a SOM world where Truth, having been
>> exposed as a sham, leaves everyone in the Void. In fact there is a
>> parallel between the "death of God" and the modern lack of morals and
>> the "death of Truth" and the modern lack of meaning. Both stem from a
>> valueless world, where nothing is better than anything else and where,
>> as a result, nothing can be said which has any meaning. It is the
>> intellect catching itself in its reflexion
>
>Hmmm. I'm not sure if we agree or not. Is it by subject-object logic
>(SOL) that "truth has been exposed as a sham"? IMO it UPHOLDS
>the value of objetivity (truth) different from falseness (subjectivity),
>yet a fanatical analytic dissection (like that of P of ZAMM) shows
>that it is without a foundation.
You wonder whether to agree or not, but you say the same thing in a
different way, Bo. This is exactly what I mean : "... yet a fanatical
analytic dissection (like that of P of ZAMM) shows that [objective truth] is
without a foundation."
And yes, it is by S/O logic (even though logic isn't one thing, but a field
with different branches... another inconsistency in SOLAQI, IMHO) that truth
becomes the greatest platypi of all. As Platt aptly noticed, "Truth is
absolute" is a statement that cannot be proven. That's Platypus Number One.
In fact the greatest case against SOM and for the MOQ is that the MOQ is
self-coherent, while SOM premises aren't.
>Seen in the SOL+AQI light it's all
>explained: Each Q-level supersedes the former, but the former is
>not left useless, so if Intellect is the value of truth (objectivity)
>versus falseness(subjectivity) it means that the truth/falseness
>divide will continue to be of great value. Would you accept this ?
No. SOM is a DISEASED way of looking at the world. It is handicaped,
genetically infirm, unsound for living. As we're speaking, it is
self-destructing, and taking the world with it with unprecedented social and
ecological destruction. It has become a pathological cancer, spread in all
areas of life, destroying everything it does not, and cannot, comprehend.
And it is INCOMPATIBLE with the MOQ, because they're jockeying for the same
field, beliefs.
- SOM states that some beliefs are the absolute best, all others being at
best flawed versions of it.
- The MOQ states that the best beliefs depend on the individual's
experience, and that beliefs only obscure the real thing, that cannot be put
into words.
How can you reconcile the two ? You can't. They're mutually exclusive.
As an analogy, Newton's mecanic isn't a lesser part of Einstein's
relativity, they are different systems, period. They both can explain a
number of phenomenon, but they do it in a vastly different way (forces for
Newton, space-time properties for Einstein). Likewise, the MOQ and SOM are
different ways of looking at the world. Where one sees causation, the other
sees preference. Where one sees energy/matter, the other sees inorganic
patterns of value. Nothing changes, but everything changes, all the way
down. So how could you possibly keep the two ? Give me a REAL answer to this
one, Bo, if you can.
>>, and instead of seeing
>> itself as the Eye of Reality, sees itself as the Eye looking at the
>> Eye looking at the Eye... unto infinity.
>
>All right I buy this too, even this Wilberian stuff - if associated with
>the MoQ - makes it easy prey for ....you know who.
In fact, I don't, and I wish you had presented the attack yourself. Please
do.
>I would of
>course have liked to elaborate on the shift to the Dynamic/Static
>divide instead of the subject/object (or the language/reality one that
>you have chosen), but my word-avalanches only obscure the view.
It's your restraint that does, IMO.
Again I'll wearily conclude by urging you to explain yourself clearly,
attack with all you've got, and strive to present criticisms supported by
argumentation.
Keeping it neat, tidy and concise doesn't help much to weed out the weak
points, and actually does a disservice to the MOQ by keeping flawed or
incomplete arguments attached to it. A bit of slash-n-burn is necessary.
Empty your cup !
Denis
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