Re: MD The SOL fallacy was the intelligence fallacy (was Rhetoric)

From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Tue Oct 18 2005 - 21:20:04 BST

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    Ian,

    Ian said:
    ...The linguistic aside I made was simply to
    unblock where I though the argument had stuck on unrecognised
    misunderstandings over different usages of the word - "intellect" in
    this case, "judging value" in another DMB / Matt thread.

    Scott:
    But the whole argument is over *how* we unblock. It is not just that we have
    different understandings. It is that I reject Pirsig's understanding and
    wish to replace it with my own. Of course if one party to the argument
    doesn't recognize that the other is arguing to *change* the usage of a key
    word, then there are problems, but I've certainly made it clear to DMB and
    others in many posts that this is what I am doing.

    Ian said:
    So taking up a point ...
    You said
    Changing the way one thinks about intellect also means changing the
    way one thinks about DQ, and I think that is really what drives DMB up
    a wall.

    I'm not sure I agree. Changing the way one thinks about intellect (and
    consciousness and rationality, etc) is the key driver for this wider
    debate, but I've not seen anything that suggests a rethinking of DQ. I
    thought Mark's DESRIP summary had that pretty well captured for our
    MoQ needs. (You're one of those people who thinks MoQ is wrong or
    broken, no ? I'm one who thinks it's pretty well right, just in need
    of a few clarifications - weeding out a few confusions, many of them
    introduced by Pirsig or with his collusion. Let me recap the thread
    whilst you explain what needs "re-thinking" about DQ.)

    Scott:
    Well, yes, one can change the way one thinks about intellect without much
    changing the way one thinks about DQ, but of course I was referring to my
    change, which pretty obviously does. All through ZMM and Lila is the
    presumption that intellect takes one away from DQ (e.g., the hot stove
    example). The way Pirsig thinks of DQ and intellect stems from his
    interpretation of mysticism. In this,. he follows the Northrop/Watts line
    that Magliola calls "centric". The emphasis of this line is on DQ as some
    sort of superior, undivided state of being (ok, this, like all descriptions,
    must be scare-quoted), a state that lies behind, or that transcends, our
    normal illusory state. And the source of that illusion is, according to this
    way of thinking about DQ, intellect. Hence, Pirsig restricts intellect to
    the fourth level of SQ. Read other mystical interpretations, though, and
    this is not what one finds. So if intellect is seen as DQ (or at least as a
    subset of DQ), this Pirsigian way of thinking about DQ must be changed.

    - Scott

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