From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 23 2005 - 19:58:22 BST
Hi Paul,
MH wrote with regard to the Pirsig quote:
--- Yes, there is most definitely a need to "cut it off somewhere", so
--- long as we remember that evolution is continuous, not discrete. And I
--- think I can see Occam frowning at the "manipulation of symbols"
--- definition. It certainly hasn't helped at all in the recent SOL
--- debate.
Paul:
It seems not. I think Pirsig is saying that the manipulation of
abstract symbols is to intellect as DNA is to biology. DNA is the
"mechanism" by which the biological value of life is asserted and
maintained. The manipulation of abstract symbols is the "mechanism" by
which the intellectual value of truth is asserted and maintained.
MH replies:
Yes, it describes how intellect rose out of social language patterns
(intellect's "carbon" and so on). I suppose it describes the workings
of the intellectual level, but not the patterns themselves.
Paul:
SOL also allows nothing other than SOM to exist in the intellectual
level, whereas Pirsig's MOQ allows Indian philosophy and the MOQ itself and
therefore must identify something more elementary to intellect than SOM.
MH replies:
Precisely what I was trying to do. I realise now that saying
"intellectual patterns are beliefs" looks like a blinding flash of the
obvious, but I think it's worth remembering. The intellectual level is
populated with beliefs, which can include SOM, Indian philosophy and
the MOQ. The reason why the S/O divide can seems so fundamental to
intellect is that most people, in our culture at least, hold the
belief in S/O duality, even if they don't realise it.
Paul:
Hence, the similarity between what happened in Greece and what happened in
India is that abstract generalisations (e.g. objects, existence, reality)
began to appear in texts, most notably in the Upanishads. The
subject-object duality was indeed something of huge import, but even at this
stage, was seen as contingent upon language and not a universal matter of
fact.
MH replies:
I see this last intellectual pattern, the belief in duality not being
a matter of fact, as intellect recognising its own limitations. That's
what ZMM teaches, and I guess Indian culture doesn't need the lesson!
A thought: are all beliefs abstract, to some extent? And the
formulation of any abstraction requires a set of symbols from the
social level... Okay, probably another blinding flash of the obvious,
but never mind.
--- MH, in the past:
--- You're right, the Bible wouldn't talk about "truth" in the Greek
--- _objective_ sense, but how about "the word of God"? You're not telling
--- me that before the Greeks, nobody ever wondered about those basic
--- philosophical questions "how and why did the world come to be?" "who
--- made the world?" Pre-scientific man answers in the only way he can: by
--- stipulating a God. Who has the answers to all the mystifying
--- questions? God! Truth comes from God, because he knows - he made
--- everything. These are the best explanations available to the
--- pre-scientific mind. So I hope you won't cry SOM when I say that
--- the Old Testament was a primitive attempt to explain and describe
--- reality.
Paul:
My view is that this is how a modern scientific vocabulary reads or
describes their texts. I don't think they were purposefully written as
explanations or theories, for how does one postulate a mere "theory" when
one has no concept of propositional truth or fallacy? As Wittgenstein said,
there is no "knowledge" without "doubt" - or something like that. I think
Bo would probably agree with me on that.
MH replies:
I don't call them "mere theories" to be known or doubted, just
explanations of experience. I still refuse to believe that
pre-scientific people never tried to explain their experiences, but
I'll take Scott's suggestion and read Barfield.
MH previously:
--- Armed _with_ [missed that word before, oops] the distinction
between the nature of a static pattern and the
--- static level that determines the value of said pattern, we can see
--- that before the S/O divide, the value of beliefs was entirely shackled
--- to the needs of society. It's quite possible that a kind of natural
--- selection occured - if a belief was detrimental to a society, one of
--- two things happened. Either the leaders of the society eradicated the
--- belief/believer, or the belief spread, leading to the destruction of
--- the society. For example, can you imagine a totally nihilist society
--- surviving for very long?
--- --- And this, I suppose, is where SOL comes in. The S/O divide states that --- truth is independent of any individual and any society. Thus, as --- described in ZMM, intellectual patterns (beliefs) free themselves from --- the dictates of social value and begin to pursue the ideal of --- objective truth, or "knowledge". Paul: But SOM or SOL is not the sole custodian of the value of truth, and "truth" and "objective truth" are not synonyms. Only the correspondence theory of truth is strictly bound to SOM. In the MOQ, "truth" describes patterns of high intellectual quality and that quality is not at all dependent on the existence of independently existing objective states of affairs to which they must correspond or try to accurately represent. MH agrees: I completely agree. Regards, Mike 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
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