From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue May 03 2005 - 05:25:10 BST
Hi Matt,
On 2 May 2005 at 14:16, Matt Kundert wrote:
Mark said:
When you mentioned above that people gradually came to realize their own
self-worth and right to be free, it is the application of reason that made
the realization possible.
Matt:
Yeah, but my point is still that it's idolatrous to think that Mill was
using reason when he decided that liberty was the highest value and Aquinas
was using something else when he decided love for God the highest. I have
no idea what Mill and Aquinas were doing differently. As far as I can see,
they were both "using reason." They just did different things with it.
msh says:
The difference, I think, is in the universal accessibility of the
objects of their thought. The concept of liberty, personal freedom,
is immediately accessible to everyone. No one needs to be told that
freedom is better than being buried alive. That the concept of God
is not immediately accessible to everyone is obvious in that not
everyone believes in God. Pirsig's Quality, like Mill's Liberty, is
immediately accessible to everyone. This, I suggest, is why belief
in God is idolatrous and belief in Quality or Freedom or Liberty or
Equality is not.
So... I think there is a very clear difference between what Mill and
Aquinas were doing.
matt after some harmless snipping by me::
I haven't been following the "Nuremburg" thread, but you described
your angle as being that an "intellectual analysis of social actions
reveals a highly suspect inconsistency of social-level thought." I
don't know what "social-level thought" is supposed to be. As I
understand it, I thought Pirsig thought the social level is
represented by something like "the presidency" or "the university"
and other social institutions. As soon as you allow for "social-
level thought" you're allowing for thought _at_ the social level. I
don't think Pirsig would want this, being as institutions don't
think, only humans do.
msh:
Yeah, I knew after posting that I left myself hanging there, but I
though I'd wait to see if you caught it. My use of the the phrase
"social-level thought" was both reckless and unclear.
The social level consists of entities like the university and the
church and the presidency, but it also consists of Aristotle's
rational animals, like you and me. As rational animals we bump
against and sometimes penetrate the ceiling between the Social and
Intellectual levels. But the Intellectual level is itself composed
of an infinity of IDEAS making up its own internal hierarchy: some
ideas are better than others. So, some of us, blame it on the
biology of intelligence, bump a little higher into the hierarchy of
ideas. It's an accident, a freak of nature, pure luck, or dismal
misfortune, depending on one's personal perspective, but it's still a
fact.
When I said "social-level thought" I meant all thought that is static
and therefore protective of the status quo. I meant all thought that
retards rather than enhances evolution.
As this clarification is essential to understanding my position, I'm
gonna send this much back to you. I will respond to the rest of your
post as if you are in tune with my clarification. If you aren't, we
can straighten it out later. We also ned to be aware that very long
posts are sometimes hung in the rafters at MOQ.ORG so that, rather
than wasting time waiting and resending, it might be more efficient
to swap smaller chunks of dialogue.
More to follow...and thanks.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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