Hi Bo & all.
>Bo: Hi Gary, DMB and All.
> It seems from the last posts from David that we are in agreement about
> the Social/Intellectual relationship - and thus about the whole MOQ - it
> would have been fun to compare notes more closely, but now it's Gary
> who is out to topple OUR applecart :-).
Gary's new response: Bo your whole post is one I have to reflect on for a
while to carefully understand what you are saying and how to respond. I
have an incredible admiration for Pirsig's ideas. They are definately key
to understanding Reality. I do not beleive they are the only tools we can
use. Pirsig's MOQ gives a great overarching perspective. So, having
established that I am a "beleiver" I will give some preliminary comments to
your post. Mostly just piecemeal. My own reality is that I generally only
have the weekends to have the time to respond to all of this. Alot of my
answers are really found in my essays posted on the website. I put a great
deal of time and effort on that essay and on the next one to be posted.
Please read it to help you understanding what I am trying to say.
>
>
> On 1 Jun 2002 at 19:05, Gary Jaron wrote:
>
> > Friends, Romans, country men & women, lend me your eyes!
>
> > David Buchanan said:
> > > I snipped most of this message simply to focus on what seems like
> > > the most crucial question: where does the intellectual level begin?
> > > Pirsig says
> > that
> > > he felt it was not necessary to define the 4th level because anyone
> > > up to the task of reading Lila should already know what it is. In
> > > response to questions about it, however, he provides a definition in
> > > Lila's Child. There, the operative phrase, the key phrase is
> > > "manipulation of language-derived symbols". And it seems that
> > > understanding the difference between the 3rd and 4th level depends
> > > upon comprehending that key phrase.
>
> Bo: A comment to "manipulation of language-derived symbols". My first
> reaction after the annotation had been known was that this fitted with
> my S/O-definition of intellect: It was the social NON-REFLECIVE (use
> of) language lifted to its second power, but Erin pointed to Pirsig having
> rebutted my idea and that his new definition couldn't possibly be an
> affirmation and I felt I had been caught taking shortcuts. Yet, and yet
> again: Such a "second power" of language would necessarily be that of
> seeing language as subjective-internal in contrast to the objective-
> external world which is an immense value increase - what has
> generated civilization so now I am at it again.
>
>Bo continues: An aside: What is "thinking" other than language?
Gary's new response: In my essay which is now on the website I try to
layout what I beleive 'thinking' is. Actually I try to explain what is
going on not only on the 4th Level, but the 2nd and 1st levels within a
individual human when they 'think'. The act of comprehension, or
understanding is done by a human in and with language. But we can 'think'
in symbols other than language. Pictures, images, feelings, emotions : all
of these can be 'thoughts' in our 'mind'. [Now Bo, don't panic. I am not
trying to resurect SO metaphysics!]
Bo continues: In his book "The ....
> ...Bicameral Mind" Julian Jaynes idea is that prehistoric humans heard
> voices that they interpreted as the gods speaking to them, and that the
> break of this link between gods and men spelled a new reality - of
> alienation. In moqish: the shift from social reality to one where the
> voices became thoughts - subjective - in contrast to the objective outer
> reality.
>
Gary new responses: I like Julian Jaynes. He is another author, along side
Pirsig, on my shelf of books that explain how to understand Reality.
Jaynes presented the idea that our notion of 'consciousness' and of 'mind'
was a cultural construct. That prior to the inventions of those words the
way the events and experiences of individual's 'thoughts processes' they
were not 'in the mind'. This whole discussion gets very tricky and
confusing. It works if we keep words and non-verbal-things-that-the-
words-are-refering-to , clearly separated. There are events taking place on
the 1st and 2nd level. Jaynes is proposing a new way of understanding how
those 1st & 2nd level events were experienced by our ancestors. I could
launch into a whole tangent on Jaynes theory and MOQ but that should be done
later. That is definatley 'an aside' as you so correctly labeled it Bo.
>
Bo goes on to cite me:
> > Gary's response: Hmm. I had always thought that the Intelectual
> > stable pattern level, the 4th level was internal to a indididual human
> > being and his/her experience of life & of understanding life.
>
>BO: Gary, please, we all know that (in a SOM sense) humans are the only
> "subjects" (whose reality is ..suspended in language ... as Niels Bohr
> said). This internalism is what Phaedrus made the starting point of his
> Quality Revolution. How can I make you understand this fundamental
> premise? In ZAMM he pointed to the fact that the so-called subject-
> object notion carried to it's logic extreme leaves us with mind
> (language) only, so in a very, very, very, VERY special sense the MOQ
> is a metaphysics of ...mind, of language, of subjectivity of
> INTERNALISM. I'm wary to say this because among the uninitiated it is
> so easily misunderstood.
>
>Bo: Now, with this as a starting point - afterwards - to bring up the
"human",
> "internal" and other "mindish" notions as something that applies to -
> goes outside of the MOQ - is damaging and reminds me of John
> Beasley who has harped on the MOQ being a human construct and that
> other writers/thinkers had said things better than Pirsig. That would be
> true if this initial inside-out-turning of reality isn't heeded.
>
> >Gary: It is
> > all the stuff and events that were commonly associated with the word
> > "mind". Pirsig in Lila's Child footnote 24 says as much.
>
> BO: Yes, he does, but he - the instigator of the Quality Idea - is so
deeply
> within its premises that he may be oblivious to how easily his
> annotations can be used to re-introduce the SOM. If the MOQ is a
> rejection of the mind/matter notion how can "mind" return without the
> rest of the SOM juggernaut?
>
Gary' new response: I will have to play stupid here, so I am asking for
clarity from all: The Subject Object Metaphsyics is....what? What is SOM?
I thought that SOM was 'bad' because it put Subjects in oppostion to
Objects. It puts Subjects as some different wierd stuff and Objects were
matter, explainable stuff. I thought that in SOM Subjects were mind and
Objects were matter and the trouble was that under SOM the two didn't have
anyway to interact. I thought that under SOM only objects were "real" and
subjects were some sort of nonpublic stuff and thus "not real". I thought
that SOM was the "mind vs body problem".
If all or some the above is a correct view of SOM then I beleive that MOQ
dissolves SOM. Not by denying that there is a mind but by denying that the
mind is in oppostion to and radically different than the body. MOQ
dissovles the Aristotelian 'versus' part of the Subject Object M and mind
Body problem. I do beleive that we have a body and we have a mind. I even
beleive that Pirsig beleives that we have a mind and we have a body. I
beleive that MOQ more accurately describes how the two interact and work
together better than SOM. I will not accept that we remove those words
(mind and body) from our vocabulary in order to discuss MOQ.
> >Gary: This leaves
> > the 3rd level, the Social l stable patterns as interaction &
> > communication between two or more human beings. The Social Level is
> > all about the products of individual humans acting together, or
> > contributing to human culture, or humans simply interacting on a human
> > level.
>
> BO: As said (to Sriram) the Social Level is MOQ's "show-case". Matter,
life
> and intellect can easily be compared to the somish counterparts, but the
> communal reality is truly unique, and as David pointed to the: Intellect
> is OUT OF SOCIETY - not as you seem to want it to be out of biology
>
> (from another post of yours).
> > Gary: Wow hold on. The Intellectual level of Stable Quality came to
> > pass the moment the first Biological ancestor of us Homo Sapiens had a
brain
> > process and experience it.
>
> Gary continued:
> > this internal & individual and 3rd was both external and
> > collective.
>
>Bo: I don't get this.
Gary's new response: As my essay tries to explain, the MOQ 3rd level is
lableled 'Social patterns'. The 4th MOQ level is labeled 'Intellectual
patterns'. Humans are made up of 1st level patterns (atoms & molecules,
when you examine the smallest units of compostions) and 2nd level pattern
(we are an organic thing - an animal composed of organic patterns : hearts,
lungs, brains, etc.). Humans have an indiviudal, private experience of
Reality. This is what I lable as 'internal'. That individual, private,
internal experience and all the processes that go on 'within' the human
brain (here I am refering to all those processes which are not clearly 1st
level and 2nd level processes) I label as 4th level. The level of
'Intelectuall patterns'.
For example: we have one human witness and two other humans who are
interacting in some manner. When two humans interact and the witness
analyses that interactions the witness could take out all the 1st level
activites and events and then take out all the 2nd level activities and
events, what remains to be described is activies and events unique to the
3rd level. The 'Social patterns'. Social is the human communal
interactions. These are 'external' in that the witness can observe this
interaction. What the two humans experience in private, in their minds, is
the internal 3rd level stuff. Hope this helps a little. My essay does, at
least I hope so, a better job.
>
> >Gary: We are just stuck with poor choices, in my opinion, by
> > Pirsig in calling the 3rd level Social and the 4th level Intelectual.
> > They are clumsy words.
Gary commenting on my earlier post: I find Pirsig's term 'Intelectual' for
the word to label the 4th level of stable patterns to be the 'clumsiest'
word choice. It seems to be a source of much confussion. 'intelectual'
brings to mind : rational, formal analytic thinking, logic, sophisticated
thought, and a host of other synonms which I don't beleive are what Pirsig
meant when he talks about the 4th level patterns. The word 'intellectual'
gives rise to a host of those not appropriate semantic reactions. I would
have wished he used 'Mental patterns' and force us all to recognize a
new/better/clearer/more accurate definition of 'mental'.
>
>Bo: Yes, now you sound exactly like John Beasley. If the fundamentals of
> the MOQ aren't understood it's all clumsiness and poverty. If it is
> however, it's a fantastic achievement and something that never stop
> growing on me.
>
> Bo
Gary's final response: the MOQ is most definitely a "fantastic achievement
and something that never stops growing on me." On my book shelf of books
that are key to understanding Reality, Pirsig is found. But he is not the
only one there. If I were to sum up Pirsig's writings and thought in one
sentence I would say this: The MOQ is a Classical/Western/Scientific
version of Taoism. Quality is the key to unlocking the Universe and
Reality. But, the MOQ is not the only map to that territory.
Sincerely,
Gary Jaron, "People shape, and are shaped by, ideas."
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