From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Dec 06 2002 - 16:05:32 GMT
Hi Wim:
> So I again ask you to -please- answer:
> How and from which passages do you conclude that intellectual patterns of
> value arose simultaneously with the social level and that the arising of
> intellectual patterns of value doesn't imply that the intellectual level
> arose?
Since you insist, here are the relevant passages:
When intellect arose: "The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never
been to discover an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively
recent fad. Its historical purpose has been to help a society find food,
detect danger, and defeat enemies."(24)
When the intellectual level arose: "Or, within historical time, the day
Socrates tried to establish the independence of intellectual patterns
from their social origins." (22)
When the intellectual level became a separate level: "What had
happened since the end of World War I was that the intellectual level
had entered the picture and had taken over everything." (24).
> Regarding the value of adding to the MoQ the distinction between 'interior'
> (experience, awareness?) and 'exterior' (appearance, phenomena?) and the
> risk of thus re-introducing subject-object analysis into the MoQ, our
> 'agreement to disagree' is indeed nicely summarized by you in: 'You see
> problems that I don't see.' Let's leave it to others to judge whether I am
> making mountains out of molehills or whether you are blind to serious
> problems.
Agree.
> One last clarification (I hope) of my position:
> I agree that Quality, when creating subjects and objects, may well create
> more awareness in me of a horseshoe crab than in that horseshoe crab of me.
> I agree that the increase of awareness over time in the most successful
> species is a valuable addition to Darwinian evolution theory. BUT I think
> that THAT type of 'awareness' is a typical SOM concept that shouldn't be
> identified with the MoQ concepts 'direct experience' and 'value'. That
> progressively increasing type of awareness is just a deduced (indirect)
> experience that is created by Quality/'direct experience'/'value'. That
> improved version of Darwinian evolution theory is still part of SOM based
> science. The very next conclusion will be that this horseshoe crab's
> awareness of me is not very accessible and therefore not very relevant to
> us. It can better be ignored in favor of a high quality 'objective'
> description of its exterior aspect and in favor of a meticulous comparison
> of that description with my awareness of that horseshoe crab.
I agree that your awareness is more important than a horseshoe crab's,
but I presume the crab is also possessed by Quality and has direct
experience of value, albeit in a biological, horseshoe crab way. So I see
no reason why I can't accurately say the crab experiences Quality
events and is "aware" without automatically dropping into the dreaded
vipers nest of SOM concepts.
More importantly, you wrote something in a post to Sam of 4 Dec. that
struck me as a basic premise in your approach to the MoQ:
"For me it is the 'contradictory identity' of humans with humanity and
with creation as a whole, the experience of the divine as 'something' that
connects everyone and everything 'shining through' the experience of
diversity and conflict."
This idea of "Divine One through Many" reminded me of one of my
favorite passages by Aziz Nasafi:
"On the death of any living creature the spirit returns to the spiritual
world, the body to the bodily world. In this, however, only the body is
subject to change. The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands
like unto light behind the bodily world and who, when any single
creature comes into being, shines through it as through a window.
According to the kind and size of the window, less or more light enters
the world. The light itself remains unchanged."
If I'm right that our underlying beliefs match in a fundamental way, our
differences in our approach and understanding of the MoQ are mere
ripples in an ocean.
Platt
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