Hi MoQers,
Others have already brought over the SOUL discussion from the
moderated forum which suits me just fine. The following post of mine was
rejected from that forum because the moderator made up new rule that you
cannot refer to a discussion in the unmoderated forum!!!! Here is the
post which should have appeared in its entirety.
========================
SUMMARY: Soul is what distinguishes human thought from machine logic
Hi Bo, LilaQs
(also Ken C. and David B. - see comments below on atom bomb)
BO:
> The self/soul issue has, in fact, been discussed in many forms
> throughout the LS 3 years' history - not to speak of the millenia of
> subject-object metaphysics; "free will" its most frequent guise.
[snip]
Later in the same posty BO writes:
> The SOLAQI idea requires that Intellect is being tried transcended,
> something that fits MOQ's tenet of DQ constantly trying to circumvent
> the last static latch.
I still object to equating the Intellectual "leve" with Subject-Object
logic.
To me, pure logic of this type is thought WITHOUT SOUL.
That's a difference between computer logic and human thought.
When a computer runs, its decisions are the result of the data and
operations explicitly programmed IN.
In contrast, human "logic" is better characterized by the factors left
OUT of the decision. But there is that huge grey area of the
"unconscious" influences - difficult to say what is involved here
because you cannot "exclude" an unconcscious thought without it becoming
conscious.
It might be instructive to apply this consideration to the argument on
the MD forum about the "morality" of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Dave B. and Ken Clark have been arguing about whether the
decision making leading to the dropping of the atom bombs was moral or
not by looking at the INPUTS into that decision:-
Dave: The main factor was a desire to impress the Russians
Ken: The main factor was a desire to end the war quickly and with
minimum losses.
I would say that both factors must have been involved either consciously
or unconsciously. However, Ken hints at the myriad of other factors
which were part of the general atmosphere of the times. Ken was there,
Dave and I were not. Thus, I side with Ken in saying that the decision
was NOT a SOUL-LESS decision and must be understod in the context of the
times.
To get back to the man vs. machine issue:
Human intellect is decision making with SOUL.
Computer logic is SOUL-LESS.
That's the theme of countless Sci. fiction stories - the machine that
follows its program to absurdity and disaster vs. man who recognises
absurdity (sometimes first as an unconscious uneasiness) long before the
machine does.
Let me finish by objecting once again to BO's put down of ZAMM:
>I want to point out that the narrator of ZMM says
> that young P left India because he didn't understand what the
> instructor meant, and what's more, even the quality idea was heavily
> modified when it emerged as the MOQ in LILA. So, in my view, it
> becomes doubly wrong to use ZMM as a source when discussing the MOQ.
Though I don't remember what words Pirsig uses, it seems to me that his
whole premise is that the "Church of Reason" is following Subject-Object
dialectic logic to absurdity and is thereby becoming SOUL-LESS and
without Quality.
Pursuing the MoQ while ignoring ZAMM seems another absurdity.
Good day to you all,
Jonathan (who has hardly any time on his hands any more).
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