From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Sep 13 2004 - 03:00:13 BST
DMB,
> Scott said:
> His rhetoric, as you put it, removes the only way we can get at the
> interesting stuff, if what Pirsig calls pre-intellectual is in fact
> intellect writ large. Of course, a lot of spadework is required to show
> this, thanks to most everyone's beliefs in naive realism (to some degree
or
> other) and nominalism, but it can be done. What Pirsig did was sweep the
> problems of mind under the rug, which he had to do given these beliefs.
> This makes his metaphysics untenable, indeed unempirical, not merely
> incomplete.
>
> dmb says:
> Sweeps the problems of mind under the rug? The MOQ is untenable,
unempirical
> and incomplete? I wonder if you'd be willing to explain exactly what that
> means. Maybe I've dropped into the middle of a conversation and missed it,
> but I haven't seen anything specific. I suspect the trouble is actually
with
> your interpretation, not the MOQ. I'm guessing that you want answers to
> questions that have been rendered meaningless by the MOQ, but that you
don't
> yet see that. Its just a hunch. If we explore your charges in specific
> detail maybe we'll discover the value of my hunch. (Yes, I'm egging you
on.)
I would guess that this was written without seeing my reply to your post
(with your 2 cents on my bit of reasoning), in which I explained what I
meant by sweeping the problems of mind under the rug. To restate it, we
currently have no answers to various problems like the origin of language,
how conscious phenomena could have arisen, how universals came to be, or
why reality seems to come to us in two very different ways (from mind and
from matter). Unless and until such questions have answers, the mind/matter
problems have not been rendered meaningless. The MOQ has swept them under
the rug by simply redefining 'subject', 'object', and 'intellect', leaving
'DQ' as the answer to anything mysterious.
The 'unempirical' charge comes in that the MOQ simply ignores all the
weirdness of mind. Why are we not zombies, for example (in
philosophy-of-mind-speak a zombie is a thought experiment, imagining a
person who looks and acts just like any other person except he or she has
no conscious experience.)
>
> Scott said:
> The "capable powers that clearly exist prior to the 4th level" are, in my
> view, the powers of the 4th level (which we have only a dim use of), which
> makes the 4th level not "just another level". To deny that is more than a
> bit of rhetoric. It is a metaphysical claim, and such a claim means that
we
> either will look in the wrong place to explicate those powers, or simply
> not look at all (the supposed Zen response). So, morally speaking, we need
> to resolve this debate before we can hope to move on.
>
> dmb says:
> Powers prior to the 4th level are the fourth level so the fourth level is
> more than just the fourth level? No offense Scott, but would you please
make
> an attempt to be less cryptic and more clear? I have to guess what you
mean
> here. I suspect that you're trying to make a case that the
pre-intellectual
> reality is intelligent in some way. I'd guess you have a problem with
> calling it "pre-intellectual" because that label seems to deny that
> intelligence. Is that about right?
That's correct. I've made the case, within the limits of what can be done
in email, many times, with references to various authors who have made the
case more fully (Peirce and Barfield, and on the related "contradictory
identity" business, Nishida and Coleridge). Most all of my posts recently
have been about these two subjects. In brief, my claim is that any
examination of mental activity will bottom out in an irreducible
contradictory identity (or polarity), which is that two concepts are
needed, which define each other at the same time that they contradict each
other. For example, continuity and change, or universal and particular.
There is also a third word required, for example, awareness, consciousness,
value, or intellect, that might be said to be "in-between" the other two
concepts, and might be said to be produced by their interaction, or might
be said to produce the two. Or one might say that all three exist as a
triunity. This three-way business is irreducible, hence I assume it is
always present in everything. Our intellect, and our language, shows this
best. Hence, I say that Intellect and Quality are two names for the same
(non)-thing.
- Scott
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Sep 13 2004 - 03:00:09 BST