Hi Scott
On 5 Mars you wrote:
> I have noticed it, and read the SOLAQI web page put together by Dan
> Glover, but have not yet completely assimilated it. Part of my problem
> is that though I am much indebted to the MoQ for my thinking I am also
> indebted to other sources, and there is some conflict, so I am trying
> to work out whether this conflict is superficial or deeper.
> The main problem I have is with the idea that each q-level *came into
> existence at some point in time* from the next lower level. This is
> clearly the case if one assumes that Darwin was more or less right,
> but I do not do so. To explain why, I have to back up a bit.
Hmmm. Darwin evolution or not, if we take the current cosmological model at face
value there were aeons when the material universe was all there was and this becomes
the Inorganic Level in moqish. Then Life as the Biological ...etc. upwards. Naturally,
this is our earth, life may have different conditions and forms elsewhere, but the
sequence is established ...if one accepts the MOQ that is.
> I was a student in Cognitive Science (a couple of decades ago) and
> pondering the question of whether a computer could be conscious. I
> didn't think so, but couldn't pin down why. Finally I realized that no
> computer could be conscious because the smallest mental act (of
> awareness, feeling, experience) required the grasping of a whole, but
> a computer (being a spatio-temporal object) has every bit of it
> separated in space and/or time from every other bit. (The same
> argument applies to the brain, considered as a spatio-temporal
> object). In sum, for consciousness to happen *requires* a
> non-spatio-temporal reality of some sort. Another way to state it is
> that to be aware of time passing, we have to be outside of time --
> which is what mystics have been saying all along.
I have nothing against your approach - particularly as it starts with the fascinating
issue of AI, but aren't you selling your (awareness=quality) insight short by sounding as
if there might be an "Ah I an a computer" "awakening"? I see that you deny such a
possibility, but it reveals that you think our human wakening from sleep each morning is
to reality AS IT IS!
> Further developing this thought, I came to realize that our inability
> to understand consciousness (what does it mean to be "outside of
> time"?) was the same problem as our inability to understand God (as
> the mystics would have it) or to understand Quality.
Good, again you equate consciousness and quality. So many don't understand this and
continues to treat things in the somish, mindish - awakening from sleep - sense and
speak about aware atoms, amoebas, societies and - finally - human beings with the
ultimate kind. But the levels are value-awareness, thus our human reality is not any
God's Eye view, but a stage. Phew, Pirsig tries to convey this throughout an entire book
why should I do better?
> I had read ZMM
> shortly after it came out, so it had helped prepare me for this. So
> here, I think, though in different terms, is the same as what you are
> saying: our intellect is S/O thinking, and with that we cannot
> understand the source of S/O thinking.
"Cannot understand the source of S/O thinking"? Well, if Intellect is S/O-awareness
and each level rises out of its parent level then the S/O has its source at the social
level. But this is important: To understand that Intellect is S/O-thinking requires a higher
vista because each level's awareness only covers itself. S/O-intellect fares no better.
Intellect is panic-stricken at the prospect of being reduced from reality itself (SOM) to a
mere sub-level of this new metaphysics.
> But we *can* understand -- and
> this is the MoQ -- that subjects and objects are not primary, rather
> they are created in each instance of our awareness, and Quality is the
> driver of that creation. Is this a fair characterization?
YES!!!!!
> Now there are all sorts of unanswered questions here, primarily, out
> of what is our S/O thinking being created. The answer, I think, would
> be something like the Logos in the neo-Platonic sense, and that is why
> I suggested REASON as the quality characteristic of the intellect
> level.
Again: Our S/O-logic is created by some "rebel" social pattern. No criticism, but we tend
to go off to some lofty Platonic idea-realm when it comes to the intellectual level, it's
merely another value increment (NB, no level is "mere", it's a WORLD, but that goes
for them all, that's my point)
> But I meant it in two senses, though at the time, only one was
> relevant. That sense is that I see reason as the name of our choosing
> one bit of thinking over another, thus it is DQ working at the
> intellectual level. But to work it needs an SQ context, namely our
> current presuppositions and logic.
About (my) reason for choosing REASON. I don't know if you were around when I
launched my "expression" list:
INTERACTION-SENSATION-EMOTION-REASON.
and the last was chosen mostly for its rhyming. I don't think it catches intellect as well
as the other do their levels. One may say that there is "reasoning" whenever language
is applied, so a new candidate is welcome ...but it must rhyme!
I have read the rest with great interest, but we have limited capacity. Particularly
interesting about the subject/predicate-thinking with the Greeks, but I believe this is
another twist to the same phenomenon ...as you state so correctly.
Just this:
> Barfield also makes the point, as I believe you do in the SOLAQI, that SOL
> is a necessary stage on the way to the next stage, which he calls "final
> participation" and which mystics call the transcendence of subject-object
> duality. Again, is this a fair characterization.
Yes it is, just one remark. Before the MOQ, what we call the SOL-intellect, was no
"stage" but the world AS IT IS, and any movement beyond was a mystical transport to a
"place" where subject/object had merged into a non-dualist entity. Pirsig's solution (in
the SOL-interpretation)i.e: to leave the S/O behind as a static level is both unique and
non-mystical.
> So even though we are
> more out of touch with Reality (Quality) than those in "original
> participation" (as of course Pirsig is saying in Lila) we are in a
> progression of some sort (and nevermind how all this looks from outside of
> space and time :)
"Original participation" corresponds to MOQ's social level - what DMB calls the
mythological past - but whether we are more out of touch with Reality/Quality I really
don't know, but about progression I agree, there is no way back.
Thanks to those still "conscious" :-)
Bo
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