From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Jun 27 2005 - 09:05:35 BST
Hi Scott, Paul and Matt
I must press you into one post to catch up.
26 June Scott wrote:
> As I see it, the Vedantists worked within a general population whose
> consciousness gradually became S/O-like, same as with the Greeks. The
> Vedantists, however, were more quick to warn that the S/O divide was
> impermanent, so was not the basis of reality (not that there weren't
> such warners in the West, but their voice wasn't dominant). Hence they
> avoided turning the S/O divide into SOM. So intellect in the East was
> also mainly S/O, and the evidence for that is that the philosophers
> (and not all of them) felt the need to warn against it.
Thanks Scott, this is enough to affirm my hunch that the
mysterious "separate oriental intellect" is a hoax. There can as
little exist a non-S/O intellect as there can a non-biological
biology. Even the dictionaries define intellect as S/O, but my
pointing to it is like pouring water over a goose (as we say) There
must be something with the English-American mind that
"beatifies" intellect.
If you disagree with this and join Paul in the "belief" that intellect
may harbour any "thought patterns" ...I have problems with your
logic. The below ....
> I wouldn't say it corrects all shortcomings -- one still needs to see
> Intellect as the driving force of evolution, as being the same
> (non)-thing as Quality. The belief that intellect just came into being
> in humans 2500 years ago is unworkable. And mathematics is an exception
> to the SOL idea that all intellect is S/O.
Reveals that you subscribe to the "intelligence" definition of the
intellectual LEVEL and that is untenable. People of the social era
surely made calculations (the Egyptians of the pyramidical form)
and what is the big difference between calculation and math?
None whatsoever, and "mathematics an exception to the S/O"?
I'll wait for your elaborating here before answering this seemingly
nonsensical statement.
> Yes, I've read Jaynes. I am also aware that Jaynes' had to squeeze his
> correct observation (that intellect -- that my thoughts are *my*
> thoughts -- started after Homer) into a materialist framework.
How you manage to nail me a materialist is beyond me, maybe
because you are an idealist and sees no other alternative. After
rejecting the SOM - and its idealist/materialist dichotomy - this is
"over and out".
-----------------------
For Paul who wrote:
> Also, I would add that recognising a distinction between subjects and
> objects is one thing, but talking about "objective knowledge" is another.
> The eastern conception of "true knowledge," insofar as they recognise such
> a thing, is something much more related to certain experiences than to
> logical constructions.
Yes, that's the point, the Orientals did not make the S/O
awareness into a metaphysics but it was not "intellect" that
expanded into a quality-like awareness, rather their outlook. Their
intellectual level remains the S/O and so will the Occidental
intellect when the MOQ expands OUR outlook.
> Finally, Bo, to my knowledge you have never answered my claim that SOL
> rests on faulty reasoning - i.e. "the first intellectual patterns were
> based on the S/O distinction, therefore all intellectual patterns are
> based on the S/O distinction." There are enough intellectual patterns
> (see e.g. Matt's recent list) that aren't based on SOM to demonstrate that
> there must be something more elementary to intellect. So saying that
> "because intellectual patterns emerged with the S/O distinction of the
> Greeks, all intellectual patterns must have the S/O distinction" is like
> saying that "because life emerged with viruses, all forms of life are
> viruses."
The last metaphor was a poor one, I would rather say: Because
life started with reproduction, all forms of life must reproduce. But
sophistry aside, the point is that in ZMM Pirsig describes how the
SOM emerged and how it developed and in LILA he goes on -
now calling it the intellectual level - how it by Descartes got its
modern mind/matter form and developed into SCIENCE.
OK, ZMM's SOM=LILA's intellectual level Pirsig never affirms,
but the evidence is overwhelming. He sometimes speaks about
an intellect per se, but it never takes off and when railing against
science he is really railing against intellect's objective half. And
here is the source of all ills. The MOQ rejects SOM, but in LILA
it's only its "objective over subjective" component which is
attacked, its "subjective over objective" part is almost forgotten.
Had Pirsig stressed this the SOL would have been superfluous.
"Enough intellectual patterns" and "Matt's list."? Please give me
one or two examples from it.
-----------
For Matt who wrote 22 June. (among other things)
> In particular, it allows us to say, far less bombastically and
> paradoxically, that the MoQ is an intellectual pattern, like SOM, and
> that when we argue about the MoQ we are using intellectual patterns
> against other intellectual patterns.
I think you use "intellectual" in the same sloppy way as Mike and
Allen regarding Phaedrus' knife. After a lot of "analytical"
knifemanship P. arrived at the conclusion that INTELLECT IS
THE S/O DIVIDE. In your new willingness to speak about the
MOQ, how do you explain that away?
See how easily these SOMish (seemingly) self-evident
statements pours out from your "objection factory" and how they
screw up the MOQ.
> All this rather than Bo's
> obscure "SOL-MoQ is Reality and when I argue about the Sum Total of
> Reality I'm forwarding an opinion about it." I'm not sure I fully
> understand how Bo gets around the subjectivism that he finds so abhorent
> in the standard account's apparent description when, as far as I can
> tell, an opinion would have to be in Bo's mind, as opposed to matter,
> whereas for us, the horribleness of this realization is defused.
I see that you are in a panic to distance yourself from me. A great
pity, but who am I to stop you.
Bo
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