From: ml (mbtlehn@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Oct 05 2004 - 06:14:05 BST
Hello Scott,
>
Scott:
> (I think I am responding to this out of order. Apologies if this confuses
> anything.)
>
mel:
Me plenty confused Kimosabe, but not think
your response make 'em me more so... ;-)
> > > [Scott prev:] The issue is whether Intellect is there in inorganic and
> > > biological levels. I don't understand "Intellect is evolutionary a
> > process"
> > > with respect to this question. Also, I would think that to call Quality an
> > > attribute is non-MOQ. What is it an attribute of?
> >
> > mel:
> > Think of quality as an attribute of being
> > As I understand MoQ, there is no intellect
> > in the physical or biological, but rather
> > the physical and biological are in the
> > intellect or maybe more correctly they
> > are foundations for intellect.
>
> [Scott:] I don't think that Pirsig would approve of saying that Quality is
> an attribute of being. I think he would say that being is a product of
> Quality. The rest of what you say is, I believe, MOQ's position (but not
> mine).
mel:
Good question, not sure what he would say,
but it was how I interpreted it. (probably more
experientially than anything else.)
>
> > > [Scott prev:] There is no value unless there is an awareness of better
> and
> > > worse. Such an awareness requires comparisons. It need not show itself
> in
> > > S/O form, but that's about the only way we know to think about it. There
> > is
> > > no such awareness in a purely mechanical universe, for example, so we
> > > reject that there is a purely mechanical universe. So if value is
> > > omnipresent, then there is omnipresent an appreciation of value. In our
> > > experience, that appreciation shows in the various ways that we say that
> > > things are meaningful. All those ways involve the relation of a thing or
> > > event to a pattern. This is what Peirce calls a sign-event, the 3-way
> > > interaction of thing/event, pattern, and relating. This, it seems to me,
> > is
> > > a more productive way to address Quality than the MOQ's.
> >
> > mel:
> > There is a lot of assumption in this bit
> > of real estate. The long response I deleted
> > may be best replaced with a question.
> >
> > What do you see as the relation between
> > Quality and Value?
> > (sorry if I missed it earlier...)
>
> [Scott:] Like Pirsig, I use the terms interchangeably, subject to
> syntactical requirements.
mel:
I may be idiosyncratic here as well, but I see
Quality as inherent and Value as relational
to quality... time to re-read a six or maybe
seventh(?) time.
>
> > > [Scott prev] I am trying to treat Intellect as neither subjective nor
> > objective,
> > > but as ontologically prior to both. What past flavored formalism are you
> > > referring to?
> >
> > mel:
> > Your treatment of Intellect is outside of
> > MoQ as Pirsig related it, at least as I read
> > his work and I may be wrong...
>
> [Scott:] You are correct, my treatment of intellect is outside of MOQ. I
> have tried to be clear about that.
mel:
Sorry, that was where I missed, thought
you were trying to stretch, but ending up
replacing. Now I understand it was not
a 'slip'. thanks.
>
> > What I should ask is, why you are considering
> > Intellect a pre-existing condition or attribute?
> > This is intriguing.
>
> [Scott:] Because I consider intellect to be irreducible, that is, it is not
> something that can be developed from a universe that did not contain it.
> Instead, I agree with those pre-SOM philosophies that regarded human
> intellect as a degraded and limited form of divine intellect, which latter
> is what drives the evolutionary process. (There are, to be sure, huge
> adjustments that need to be made to the pre-SOM philosophies, not least of
> which is to include evolution, but also to avoid an overly-theistic
> picture.)
>
> This does not conflict with the MOQ view that there is a fourth level of
> SQ, though it certainly describes it differently.
mel:
We have a definitional conflict. I always winced
at the use of intellect as a term, as I was always
used to intellect as a subset of reason and always
as inferior to knowledge. Intellect is, in my argot,
the modeling of what you know or experience,
or remember, to get to an approximation of what
you do not.
The "divine," as all-knowing, would need intellect
about as much as the starship Enterprise would
need one of Adm. Nelson's ship cannons to hurl
8 pounders or maybe a sharp stick would be a
better example.
I could see what Pirsig was pointing at, however,
despite terminology, at least I thought so.
>
> > > [Scott prev:] Correct. I am disagreeing with Pirsig's sense of
> Intellect.
> >
> > mel:
> > Is it specifically how he uses the term?
>
> Yes.
>
> > If so, is there another term for what he describes?
>
> [Scott:] I don't think so. Other philosophers have distinguished
> 'intellect' from 'reason', but not consistently (that is, one philosopher
> will elevate 'intellect', while another will elevate 'reason'.) Since we
> tend to use them interchangeably, one would need to put considerable effort
> into making the terminology clear. That can be done in an essay, but is
> difficult if not impossible in a discussion forum. Hence I resort to
> Intellect vs. intellect, or divine vs. human intellect.
mel:
We are in agreement.
> > Otherwise, is it fatal to what you view as his
> > formulation of MoQ or
> > the notion of MoQ vis other schools of thought?
>
> [Scott:] My view is that his restriction of the word 'intellect' results in
> an inadequate metaphysics. It has no vocabulary for investigating what is
> most interesting about intellect, and therefore, about the cosmos.
mel:
Your use of intellect begins to edge over into
what I see as being, the spiritual.
(not religious, not mystical)
>
> > > > mel:
> > > > Apprehension in Being is not the same as the
> > > > discussion of an experience in the past. To rely on the
> > > > portion of intellect trapped in the past, in language, is
> > > > to remain at a remove from Apprehension in Being...
> > >
> > > [Scott prev:] Not if language (or Language) is the Ground of Being.
> Nature is
> > > (speaking metaphorically) God's speech. Our speech is a response.
> >
> > mel:
> > Language is not the ground of being.
> > Mature is certainly a grand process of effect and
> > speech is one of our responses, but being
> > precedes speech.
>
> Sez you :-) (I assume you meant "Nature"). I don't have the energy right
> now to fully back up my claim that language precedes being, but it would
> involve pointing out that 'being' is in polar relation to 'becoming', as
> well as to 'non-being', that this polarity is "what makes the world go
> 'round", and is to be found in the fundamental workings of language and
> intellect. One might hypothesize a One of which language and intellect are
> the first emanation, but I think it is better to see the One and
> language/intellect as itself in a polar relation.
>
mel:
(Yup, I xam't trype qell) I base my assertion in
part on the experiential. My earliest memories
often involved the full body "light-heaviness"
that brought its own certainty about the whole
unfolding in the present moment. I had no way
to express this.
As I tried from time to time to make some
reference to the feeling, the state of open being,
I got uncomprehending or worried looks, so I
learned to shut up and try to forget, or avoid the
states even approaching the same place.
Years later I saw books on "mysticism" and
saw a nugget of the same, but burried in
mumo-jumbo often. Some of the works of
Existentialism showed harmonics, but
not quite the same. Husserl came close
in his writing, what I could absorb of it.
Then my first Zen reading brought the
initial approximate language that
pointed in the same place...
Martial arts practice and meditation showed
that I was not as odd as I'd feared.
The non-being manifesting as becoming
to manifest in being is all deeply beyond
language. The marvelous leaps of insight
that thunder right through the 'center' of
your brain exceed language, but leave
enough residue to be made into words,
numbers, systems, engineered artifacts,
advances and are thereby worshipped as
"insight". Language follows those and
even celebrates them, but you have to
watch very closely when it happens to see
the gap, the snap-after-the-fact.
To be more operationally correct. Language
acts on our reasoning much as weights on
an athlete's muscles in one respect and in
another respect with practice language does
increase our sensitivity and our level of
detectability, and recognition, by allowing
the placing of "sign posts" pointing to our
experience, enriching the mindscape.
The danger to deeper creativity and closer
recognition of being, is when language is
taken to be more than it is. It is a tool, maybe
the most marvelous of all, but you should
recognize it only as a tool. In the workshop
you see what you want to do before you grab
the tool, as it were, being is like the
recognition before the language.
Being exists outside of the animal
homo sapiens and in those other
"animates" where it occurs apart
from capacity for language, shows
language and being as not correlated.
> > > > mel prev:
> > > > Mysticism is not a needed ingredient and adds nothing.
> > >
> > > [Scott prev:] It is data that a metaphysics must be adequate to.
> >
> > mel:
> > I understand that systems are always
> > meta-systemic in their degrees of
> > freedom or analytical dimension, but
> > I am not sure if this is where you are pointing.
> > Could you expand?
>
> [Scott:] Mystics have said many remarkable things down through the ages. A
> metaphysics needs to evaluate what they have said. A materialist
> metaphysics will claim that all that they have said can be chalked up to
> delusion and/or fraud. A non-materialist metaphysics, such as the MOQ or
> what I am putting forth, has the more difficult task of attempting to
> separate the wheat from the chaff in what they have said.
mel:
Hmmm. At some point, language no longer quantifies
experience, nor qualifies being. Tough going that...
>
> > mel:
> > Anything not fully surrounded by language,
> > not fully static, largely escapes the grasp of
> > Aristotelian logic. Predicate calculus fails at
> > the edge of specific definition or at a post-
> > binary condition.
>
> [Scott:] True. That is why I have been exploring what Nishida Kitaro calls
> the logic of contradictory identity, which I believe is the same as what
> Coleridge calls polarity. It takes seriously such formulations as "the self
> exists by negating itself".
mel:
must explore this...any referents? recommendations?
>
> > > [Scott prev:]> But as soon as one has form one has
> > > > > value and intellect. To put it in mythical terms, all reality is
> > created
> > > > by
> > > > > God's conceptualizing. Hence the error of the "go-beyond-intellect"
> > > school
> > > > > is to treat intellect as just being about reflecting on what exists.
> > It
> > > is
> > > > > also the source of what exists.
> > > >
> > > > mel prev:
> > > > This is an interesting weaving of post hoc ergo propter hoc and
> > > > an equivocation of intellect into something preceding intellect
> > >
> > > [Scott] On the equivocation, only if one defines intellect the way SOM
> and
> > > the MOQ do. I don't see how the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy
> applies,
> > > since I am not talking about causation.
> >
> > mel:
> > As I read your statement you place intellect
> > as the source of existence, being, and yet
> > the term "intellect" as a process in mind
> > is post social/biological/physical for the
> > MoQ, as for Buddhism and other meta" "
>
> [Scott:] This is simply resolved by considering human intellect as the
> occasion of Intellect incarnating itself -- in an impure and limited form,
> to be sure.
>
> >
> > Maybe it is more emergent or eruptive than
> > causal, but to place intellect on both ends
> > has the flavor of p.h.e.p.h.
>
> [Scott:] I think you misunderstand p.h.e.p.h. It is the fallacy of "Since A
> comes after B, then A is caused by B". I think what you are complaining
> about is called circular reasoning, but see above for that.
mel:
I see where you may have seen a circle, but I did
distinctly see a false cause wrapping on itself.
However, as we saw earlier, our problem is now
seen as definitional, so this p.h.e.p.h. no longer
applies.
> > mel:
> > I agree that spurning the intellect is a mistake, but
> > so is driving purely into intellect. Coherence seemed
> > to offer an "anchor" or a vector...
> >
> > It seems worth exploring.
>
> [Scott:] What is Coherence without intellect? Indeed, are they, if not the
> same, mutually dependent?
mel:
I guess Coherence snas intellect is like a
cannon with the left front half of the barrel
missing. Got to have all the pieces to control
the degrees of freedom with SQ to aim at the
place where DQ is. (I will try and finish the
piece I am working on next week where I
try and address part of this...)
>
> > > [Scott prev:] I propose that one learn to see limits as what intellect
> creates,
> > > that reality is created by setting limits.
> >
> > mel:
> > Relying on intellect to see the limits of intellect
> > is not going to work from a system viewpoint
> > because there is no access to the additional
> > degree of freedom or analytical dimansion.
> > The context must be meta-intellectual, as it were.
> > Hence the bippity-boppity-boo of Zen.
>
> When you say "relying on intellect to see the limits of intellect", you are
> continuing a SOM view of intellect. That view is that intellect is all
> about understanding systems. The non-SOM view that I am espousing is that,
> while we do apply intellect to understand systems, in its greater role --
> in humans as well as divinely -- it creates systems, which is to say, it
> creates realities. Hence it is not limited by any one system. When we
> engage in understanding a system, we are (if we understand truly)
> revisiting the acts of intellect that created it in the first place.
mel:
Re: SOM. Anything we discuss in language,
in Indo-European languages at least, is going
to have a cloying aroma of the SOM, because
out very language is constructed so.
Subject-verb-object are our very most basic
construction techniques. Experimental writing
with all verbs with adverbs and adjectives can
make for some moving reading, but it is so
easy for us to lose track. Otherwise we are
mostly stuck discussing anything SOM-ishly.
So, short answer true. However in this SOM-fish
market, even your non-SOM smells like fish.
Systems of systems are inherently complex
without limit. There is a notion of unboundedness
in intellect. Not so much INFINITE, in great god tones,
but endlessly multiplicative, loggedly exponential.
However, intellect deals with attributes of being
that are "intellectable" and not things of a quality
apart from intellect. (Yes it sounds circular, bear
with me.) As much the same way as the sense of
smell does little to distinguish different shades of
blue, or visual accuity detects little difference in
B and B-flat.
I see Pirsig's fourth level, named Intellect, as being
a foundation for something else, as physical was
for biological which was for social, then for intellectual.
Sometimes you just got to walk up to the
wiggling surface of being and splash it a
little to see what's becoming, careful not to
splash too much on you. But it seems to
be somewhere not quite languageable.
>
> > mel:
> > It would seem critique rather than criticism is a
> > better approach. (In the traditional sense...)
> >
> > The critique adds an expansive rigor in
> > the form of extension and complement.
> >
> > Criticism acts to break and to be properly
> > used, if you want to engage as a philosophy
> > in the formal sense, it must follow the rigor of
> > expansion otherwise it is a waste of time.
> >
> > Pirsig himself has conveyed that he has
> > only just started.
> >
> > So, the stages of a formal philosophical
> > development:
> > 1)Original Position
> > 2)Sympathetic Hearing
> > 3)Expansion / Synthesis
> > 4)Critique
> > 5)Comparison
> > 6)Criticism
> > 7)Debate
> >
> > (I may be missing a step or two,
> > this is from memory and 20-odd
> > years past...)
> >
> > ...place us at about 2 at this point.
> > Don't jump to 6 unless you like shooting
> > fish in a barrel... ;-)
> > ------------
> > Sorry if it sounds bombastic and pedantic
> > 'twas not meant to drool Ivory tower dust
> > on this thread...
>
> [Scott:] Well, I started out in this forum (about three years ago)
> critiquing and not criticizing. I found (in part from reflecting on the
> reactions I got to my critiquing) that the MOQ cannot expand to incorporate
> what I view as inadequacies, without revisiting and altering its
> fundamentals. Put bluntly, the MOQ is still captured by SOM (see above on
> its view of intellect. Another indication is Pirsig's espousal of
> empiricism, basically a SOM-inspired methodology). Until this is rooted
> out, there is no scope for expansion. Hence the criticism.
mel:
Three years...I understand then, your frustration.
Self-perpetuation dilema:
To discuss MoQ in language will trap us in SOM.
To look for MoQ outside of language makes it
incompatible with a pholosophical approach.
Smells like fresh chocolate chip buddhas,
hot from the oven.
You cleared a lot up for me in where I was
missing your points.
thanks--mel
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