MD Foul play

From: Scott Roberts (jse885@cox.net)
Date: Sun Sep 04 2005 - 05:25:09 BST

  • Next message: Scott Roberts: "Re: MD Essentialist and Anti-essentialist"

    To all MD-er's,

    In the " Debating Intellect MoQ-Wise" thread, Mark Maxwell said (see
    http://www2.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/17054.html )

    Mark 2-9-05:
    I would suggest that the total repertoire of symbols
    is static while DQ evolves the whole repertoire all
    the time. The repertoire includes memories, books, the
    Internet, etc.
    [end]

    I responded to this with

    Scott asked:
    Why not call the evolving of the symbolic repertoire
    intellect?
    [end]

    In his next post, Mark answered:

    Mark 3-9-03:
    Because it is static.
    [end]

    I then made a sarcastic response ["I see. Because Pirsig has decreed that
    intellect is static, the word 'intellect' cannot be used to describe the
    creation of intellectual patterns. Seems a bit high-handed to me, but I
    guess Pirsig has spoken, and that settles it"], based on the assumption that
    by 'it' Mark was referring to 'intellect'. The other option would have been
    that 'it' referred to "the evolving of the symbolic repertoire", but calling
    this 'static' (especially given that it is DQ that does the evolving)
    doesn't make sense. Mark then responded with

    Mark 4-9-05:
    There is no evidence, to my knowledge, that anyone,
    let alone Robert Pirsig, has suggested the Intellect
    is static.
    Please get a grip of yourself Scott.
    What HAS been suggested is that the Intellect employ
    es a contemporary repertoire of static symbols - and
    that repertoire is evolving
    [end]

    So now Mark is denying that his earlier response "Because it is static"
    meant "Because intellect is static", and apparently to make that consistent
    with saying that something evolving is static (why he should want to is
    beyond me), in his 4-9 post he changed the quotation from the earlier post
    to read:

    Mark 2-9-05:
    I would suggest that the total repertoire of symbols
    is static while SQ evolves the whole repertoire all
    the time. The repertoire includes memories, books, the
    Internet, etc.
    [end of quotation]

    That is, he changed DQ to SQ. I consider this to be intellectual dishonesty.
    It is possible that in his original 9-2 post he meant to type 'SQ' (however
    strange it may be to refer to something evolving as static), but in that
    case he should have made that clear in this post, since my responses were
    based on it being 'DQ'. (And I do hope he was not laying some sort of trap
    based on my sometimes saying "DQ is not other than SQ", that is, referring
    to contradictory identity. Thinking of this is probably paranoia on my part,
    but in the past I have sometimes found paranoia to be an appropriate
    attitude in trying to debate with Mark. Serves me right, I suppose, for
    trying again.)

    - Scott

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