From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Oct 27 2002 - 01:58:08 BST
Sam and y'all:
Making it up as you go along!? Arrrgh. Gotta give you points for energy, but
it seems to me that you tripped on the first few steps of your epic journey.
Sam said:
I do accept that 'intellectual' can be defined in such a
way as to resolve my problems, but I think that doing so would make
'intellectual' into a very specific term of art within the MoQ and change
its meaning from its normal use. I don't think that's what Pirsig is trying
to do; moreover I think that 'individual' (or possibly another substitute -
see my conclusion) is both clearer to understand and less misleading about
the nature of the fourth level.
DMB says:
Why would you insist on the dictionary here? Pirsig spends a great deal of
time explaining the nature, evolution and history of the intellectual level
and so it MOST CERTAINLY IS "a very specific term of art within the MOQ".
Within the MOQ both "social" and "intellectual" define levels of existence
that were basically unrecognized by SOM, flatland, scientific materialism,
the dominant paradigm or whatever you call the world view that produced that
dictionary. Sure, dictionary definitions are related and he chose those
words for that reason, but in Lila he spells out enlarged concepts in both
cases.
Sam said:
In some ways this is similar to DMB's original criticism about scalability
(which I neglected to answer): "BOTH collectivity and individuality appear
at every level."
Firstly, I agree that 'individuality' understood purely as the ability of an
entity to choose is not unique to the fourth level....
Similarly a human being - a brujo?
Moses? - develops a new legal system which allows their society to flourish
more successfully. The DQ innovation of that new legal system is valuable in
terms of its ability to foster social flourishing, so although it is a human
being doing the innovation, the dominant value is social value.
DMB says:
I thought you'd never get around to this. I think its a big one. If
individuality is not unique to the 4th level, then individuality is not the
feature that distinquishes it. Your example shows how individuals are often
at the heart of social change, which is individuality on the social level.
These examples are figures who made big break throughs and their dynamic
nature complicates the issue, but there are tons of unencumbered examples.
Cops, priests and soldiers are all individuals. They have an identity, a
sense of self, an ego and all that. Celebrities, gods, and kings are all
individuals. But none of these individuals require intellectual values to be
what they are.
Sam said:
The question for us is what is the dominant value of the fourth level? What
are the values within which DQ provokes a particular choosing unit to
respond? And what is the nature of the choosing unit? (For clearly, the
choosing unit at each level is an 'individual' of some sort or another).
Platt states: 'Where intellect dominates, the byword for individuals is "Is
it logical?" and/or "Is it scientific?" ' I agree with this;
DMB says:
Only people can assert social and intellectual values. It takes a living
being, a person, that's for sure. That's the mysterious "choosing unit". The
issue of the fourth level's dominant value is more interesting. I think you
short change it in a big way by reducing it to things like science and
logic. That's alot more true of SOM, but is a little harsh even to describe
scientific materialism. The intellectual level contians all these things and
more. Just as there are many species and many cultures, so there are many
possibilities within the intellectual level. And that's a good thing.
Evolution doesn't proceed very well when there is only one species. Don't
forget that the MOQ is an intellectual construction too, and is designed to
address this problem, the problem of that cold, Mr. Spockish, dehumanizing
kind of intellect. This is the SOM flaw that Pirsig identifies, addresses,
and solves with, among other things, the identification of the distinctions
between the social and intellectual levels. logic, rationality are just some
easily recognized features of this thing. They like basic requirements. That
is, illogical and irrational assertions don't have much intellectual value.
Sams said:
I believe that the values of the fourth level - those within which different
actions can static latch, the arena within which DQ can operate - can best
be understood as those values which support full human flourishing -
_eudaimonia_. Intellectual flourishing is one aspect of that full human
flourishing, but there are areas of human flourishing - most prominently,
art, music, poetry, friendship - which are not reducible to either social
level values or intellectual values. They represent high quality
achievements (and practices) which are not resolvable to either social
quality or logical/scientific quality. They represent the best of humanity.
And _that_ is what I think is missing when we talk of 'intellect' being the
fourth level.
DMB says:
There is a place for art, music and poetry within the MOQ. It can be social,
like a military marching band. It can be intellectual, like the poetry of
Allen Ginsgerg. It can be both of these and also go beyond into the dynamic.
Pirsig's code of art covers this kind of stuff as well as dynamic creativity
in realms that are not "art" in the traditional sense of the word. The Zuni
Brujo is such and example. The full human flourishing you speak of is
totally worthy as a goal and I'm certainly with you on that, but I think
that it comes from bringing all the levels together, including the
intellect, into an integrated whole. That's when the best kind of creative
and dynamic "art" is done. This is when individual judgment is at its best.
A person with all values available simple has more choice, a more informed
choice, a broader perspective, is more likely to act dynamically and can
therefore make better choices and more moral decisions. The emotional
maturity you speak of can be seen as a person whose intellectual values are
able to weigh their own feeling and emotions against their principles and
reason appropriately. Yes, wisdom is better than logic, but illogical
reasoning will give you an unwise conclusion every time.
In last Thursday's post Sam said:
I would back up my point by a brief consideration of how the fourth level
was born. Pirsig refers to 'government by consent'; would people here accept
that democracy is a social level pattern that has been shaped in order to
allow the fourth level to flourish more freely? Yet democracy is all about
aggregating the choice of individuals, not the intellectual consensus. It is
notoriously the case that aggregating the intellect diminishes its Quality,
and yet democracy is still a high quality innovation.
DMB says:
This is a good example of the confusion that ensues when the third and
fourth levels are re-defined as collective and individual. Democracy is not
a social level value, it is an intellectual value that guides society. The
fact that this principle operates on large groups of people does not make it
a social value. Otherwise we could view the scientific and academic
communites as social level things, which they are clearly not. Rights are
extended to all citizens equally and are protected collectivel by the cops
and the courts, and they are designed to protect the intellectual values of
individuals and groups. As you can see, ndividuality and collectivity are
decidedly NOT helpful in sorting out or defining the levels.
Is all this just an elaborate ruse to dehumanize intellectuals? Trying to
turn them into Vulcans or robots or what? Just kidding.
DMB
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