From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Sun Sep 25 2005 - 08:21:52 BST
Hi David
My rough tone does not "make friends and influence people"
exactly, but at times I feel like speaking to walls. Don't get me
wrong, but you haven't always professed to defend the MOQ,
rather pointed to moq-like things with other philosophers - Arthur
Young for instance - but as my thesis is that the MOQ has no ties
with anything before it no wonder I doubt your - um - ability to
take me on. I may be an ignorant regarding many things, but
about the MOQ I am confident.
We'll take it really slow: Firstly, do you agree with Pirsig that
there is a subject/object metaphysics and that it emerged as
described in "Zen and the Art ...."?
If so then when Pirsigs says (in the letter to Paul for instance) that
that the Greeks "developed" intellect doesn't that mean that the
said SOM is equal to the intellectual level. Where is the flaw with
this reasoning?
Another thing. In LILA pirsigs says something like this: "At
Homer's time when existence hadn't transcended the social
level". How else can one interpret it than AFTER Homer the
intellectual level was reached, and as this was a Greek affair,
again SOM=intellect. One must be pretty bent on NOT
understanding to ignore these signs.
Still more: In the said Turner letter Pirsig says that the old books
of the bible shows an absence of intellect. And what is absent is
clearly the objective, skeptic approach to reality (the "subjective"
approach is also missing, but that's a different case. See below) I
would of course have liked Pirsig to spell it out directly, but he
knows my "mission" and avoids it.
I'll just comment a few you comments to my comments to yours.
> > I only want to add one important point. Distinguishing between
> > objectivity and subjectivity does NOT mean that only objectivity
> > (science) came to be, subjectivity also arose from this. The social
> > level knew no such distinction, the mythological gods weren't
> > spiritual, otherwordly entities.
> DM: Very confused. But yes objects and subjects are defined in
> contrast to each other. So?
Why confused? The said distinction (SOM) came to pass with the
intellectual level. The era before it (when the social level was top
notch) did not know this distinction. It's crucial for understanding
that the intellectual level isn't "thinking" or "intelligence" ... and
hence the SOL. The point is the same as Pirsig's "intellect lacking
in the old parts of the Bible".
Finally you said something disparaging about dictionaries that
define intellect as S/O. This is Oxford's Advanced, but it shows
clearly what I am up against. You along with almost all perceives
intellect as intelligence, why I call it the intelligence fallacy, and
the more proofs I bring the more stiff the resistance - and
superficial the rejections.
Bo
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