From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Oct 15 2005 - 14:53:57 BST
Greetings Bo (Scott and Ian mentioned),
I've been rather slow in replying to these crucial questions, largely
because my ideas about the 4th level are still very fluid (read:
poorly defined). Still, this has the advantage that I'm not trying to
defend any particular interpretation - just throwing mud at the wall
and seeing if anything sticks :)
Mike:
> > This exchange between Bo and DMB (quoted below) definitely calls for
> > comment from me, because my initial objection to Bo's SOLution was
> > very similar to the one set out by DMB here. Roughly, it is: I believe
> > in the possibility of continuing with an improved intellect, and don't
> > want to see "intellect" banished to the level of SOM. In other words,
> > I look forward a "life after SOM" for intellect. After all, wasn't
> > Pirsig's mission in ZMM to repair intellect, not to leave it behind
> > with SOM and square rationality? I had the idea that Bo was trying to
> > throw intellect into the same dungeon as the ugly, square prisoner
> > that is SOM.
Bo:
> This was really some suggestion Mike. I have understood that
> "intellect" carries the load of MIND and that any attempt to bring
> it in line with what Pirsig's books indicate is seen as some
> degradation.
>
> It must once again point to the strange fact that (the dictionaries'
> definition of) "intellect" can be honed down to the S/O capability
> and as I concluded in my SOL essay:
>
> What screws it up is the said "mind" notion which makes
> anyone reading this interpret it as mind doing the intellectualizing",
> while in MOQ's definition intellect is doing the subject/object-ualizing.
>
> So I wonder if you too are victim of the "intelligence fallacy"?
> Namely that you mean intelligence when speaking of intellect?
Mike:
At this stage, I don't mean very much at all by intellect. Deciding on
what we *ought* to mean by intellect, in an MOQ context - that one of
the things that this particular discussion is aiming at, right?
For that very purpose, I hope you won't mind me dissecting the nature
of your argument, and the argument of "fallacies" in general. The
thing to notice is that it depends on definitions. I'm commiting a
fallacy if I confuse "intellect" with "intelligence", but it's only
really a confusion when these two words have rigid and conflicting
definitions. And to you, they DO have rigid and conflicting
definitions, so you have all the tools you need to start accusing
people of commiting fallacies. Unfortunately, no-one will recognise
that there is a fallacy, until they agree with your definitions.
Now, I'm willing to accept that there may be a difference of some kind
between the intelligence and intellect, but I'm not yet willing to
accept any rigid definition of intellect. I'm not confusing it with
anything in particular, I'm just - confused! (But this does mean that
I can't be commiting any fallacies, because I'm not conflating
intellect with anything at all). So I have a lot more interest in just
looking it what a "fallacy" is, because it's a classic example of a
4th-level viewpoint. And just to make it clear, I do NOT conflate
intellect with the "mind" half of Cartesian dualism, which is your big
worry, is it not?
Mike:
> > This is why I now suggest, Bo, that you drop the "intellect" label
> > from the fourth level as defined by the SOL. Call it the logical
> > level, the square level, the SOL, the fourth level, whatever. But
> > "intellect", for me at least, carries shades of meaning that do _not_
Bo:
> My initial reaction to this - just initial, not any final verdict - is that
> renaming the intellectual level (it requires a new Q-level?) will
> evoke the same logical bends as my earlier 5th. level did. What
> would your diagram of the the MOQ look like after this shuffle?
Mike:
Okay, today's clump of mud that I'm aiming at the wall looks like
this: the 4th level is distinguised by the creation, use, and re-use
of rigid definitions. The difference between 4th-level language use
and 3rd-level language use is the feeling of a sharp distinction
between "word" and "thing referred to", i.e. between word and concept.
I think this is what Scott means by the S/O[2] distinction - the
distinction that makes reflection possible. From a 3rd-level
perspective, words are felt to some degree as "incanting" or
"invoking". Whereas, from a 4th-level perspective, where words merely
"refer to" or "denote" some separate concept, the 3rd-level experience
of invocation, of words as a force of tangible creation, seems oddly
superstitious.
Now, getting to the point.. if the 4th level is characterised by a
distinction between word and definition, then the MOQ, as a set of
definitions, requires no 5th level. The "abnormal" thing about the MOQ
is that in its set of definitions, there is one peculiar one -
Quality, which is defined as being undefinable! This is what I meant
by the 4th level "submitting to a higher purpose" by using its
mechanism (definition) to admit that this mechanism is inadequate. So,
the MOQ (or any other system of thought with this mystical
non-definition or anti-definition) does not reside on a 5th level, but
it may point to the possibility of one!
What I'm hoping that I have here, is some kind of compromise, whereby
the 4th-level depends on a conception of language (and not only
language, but also its corollary - thought) that depends on SOM, that
grows from the seeds of SOM, and yet contains the MOQ. Notice that the
"mechanism of definition" that I'm emphasising here, could perhaps be
seen as the opposite side of the coin to the "abstract symbols" that
we've heard so much about. What would tie this all together, is a
watertight argument that the rise of the 4th level, the level of
dictionaries and Classical underlying form, in which words are thought
of as concept-bottles (to paraphrase Barfield), is co-dependent with
the distinction between self and other.
<snip>
Bo to Ian:
> Now, I don't postulate a 5th. level, the MOQ's intellectual
> framework is intellectual and will remain so (by the same token
> as biology's building block (carbon) remains inorganic, but it has
> formed a Quality reality of which intellect is a sub-set. I still
> search for the ultimate formulation here.
Ian to Bo:
> > Why leave rationality imprisoned in an ancient first attempt, let's not throw out rationality itself with the bathwater.
Bo to Ian:
> Rationality isn't "thrown out" by being relegated the role of the
> highest static level? No more than the social level "threw out"
> biology or intellect eliminated society, intellect just becomes
> subordinate to the Quality Reality.
Mike interjects:
Perfectly sound logic. But see how it was not evident to Ian from the
way the SOL has been presented as SOM=intellect? The problem is that
you have equated Pirsig's nemesis with the most evolved static level
we have. It make the SOL look profoundly depressing, even though it
isn't what you intend at all (right?). This is what I was trying to
show by the intellect-dungeon metaphor.
Bo asks Mike:
> Do you see and/or approve of this way of "eating the cake and
> keeping it" ...how Quality can stand above, yet remaining an
> intellectual pattern?
Mike:
The MOQ is a 4th-level set of definitions that points to (but
professes no understanding of) Quality, which stands above. I'm eating
the cake and keeping it too, the question is... are we eating the same
cake?
Bon appetit,
Mike
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