From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Oct 31 2005 - 18:03:45 GMT
Mike and David M. (Scott mentioned)
30 Oct. you wrote:
> I'd like to recap some of the suggestions floating about on the MD
> recently. Scott's been insisting that the thinking intellect is both
> static and dynamic - that thinking can be a synonym of Quality. Bo,
> meanwhile, insists on a sharp divide between "intellect" and
> "intelligence", where "intellect" should only be used to describe the
> peculiar brand of intelligence or thinking that has arisen with the
> subject/object divide. Gav made the interesting suggestion that
> intelligence, under Bo's dichotomy, could be the synonym for Quality.
This suggestion from Gav has passed me by, but I don't see
intelligence=Quality. Even the inorganic is a Quality level and so
is the biological, and life's first manifestation were bare minimum
without the neural network, that I see as intelligence's source.
> Now I'd like to ask a question to the majority on this list who accept
> Pirsig's thesis that the subject/object divide is not fundamental to
> reality: do you ever experience your thinking to be anything other
> than a purely subjective activity?
Under anaesthesia I have experienced a suspension of the
subject/object divide and I guess this is what you discussed with
Platt and other in the "tripping" thread. These are of course
regarded as exceptions to the rule, but I guess they nevertheless
are proofs that the divide isn't fundamental. If it was nothing
could lift it.
> My suggestion is that, in replying "no" to this question, I place
> myself in the 4th static level, and distinguish myself from the type
> of intelligence that preceded intellect.
I agree, but seeing the level context somehow places us offset to
intellect, this was what we arrived at in our deliberations about
how the MOQ constitutes a new reality while still remaining an
intellectual pattern.
> My suggestion is that the
> subject/object divide is fundamental to what we are. My suggestion is
> that, at the 4th level, Quality manifests itself as separate
> intelligences who feel that they are separate.
Existence is made up of all levels, but intellect as top notch
contributes more than anything to our outlook. Another point is
that the levels by definition don't see the overall picture.
Therefore SOL that postulates (as above) that the MOQ
constitutes a new reality ... while leaving its intellectual
framework behind.
Regarding "intelligence". I would have kept "subject" here. My
point is that the biological-neural complexity (enabling storage
and retrieval of former experience) makes creatures adapt to new
challenges. As social value rose above biology, intelligence
became a social asset, and when existence rose to the
intellectual level it inherited this "servant" , but now inteligence is
mistakenly seen as intellect itself. This is the "intelligence fallacy"
point, not that intelligence is Dynamic Quality.
> I retract any claim that social- or mythological-level human beings
> did not distinguish between self or other. My claim now is that they
> differed from us in their mode of thinking, in their intelligence. The
> difference is that they did not entirely feel it to the "their"
> thinking, "their" intelligence, at all.
I agree.
> As Barfield contends, they
> felt it to be a participation - not something that springs from inside
> some shadowy realm inside their heads, but something more like an
> all-pervading Nous (mind) that they could tap into. Or even gods
> talking to them. It's impossible to generalise about all 3rd-level
> consciousness, as it must have varied quite a lot. But I think we can
> be very specific about what distinguishes our 4th-level consciousness.
> In a word: subjectivity.
I too find Barfield's "participation" model most apt (Scott naturally
doesn't like him to become part of the MOQ) and find your
description of the social-mythological reality identical to my own.
> P.S. Reading this back, I realise my tone's quite assertive. Really,
> I'm just trying to put my (!) thoughts into words and get these ideas
> out there. I feel like I've encountered a few jigsaw pieces regarding
> intellect, and I'm just trying to get them to fit together. Does the
> picture make sense to anyone?
Tons of sense, and this much assertion we can stand.
Bo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
For David Morey who wrote in the same thread on the same date:
> Do you see subjectivity as an activity springing up inside your head? So
> that opposed to this is a world of passive objects and perhaps other
> subjects with conflicting interests? Well that's the unpleasant and
> confused reality of SOM for you.
You talk to Mike, but IMO this may be the stage that SOM
reached with Descartes (Scott calls it S/O[1]) - the one we know
as mind/matte - but it's root goes back to the Greeks as described
in ZMM.
> My problem with SOM goes back to its inability to explain the reality I
> actually experience, long before I read about Taoism, romantic idealism,
> phenomenology or MOQ as alternatives.
You weren't alone about this experience, but were you really the
prodigy to perceive it as (a) SOM? Compared to myself I
experienced the subject/object divide as a divine decree to
frustrate all efforts to understand (leave it to God). I too knew Zen
(through Alan Watts) Phenomenology (indirectly through Colin
Wilson) but these seemed just more mind/matterisms. Only with
ZMM did the message reach me that it might be a "metaphysics"
that had its beginning and possibly would have an end.
> I do not live in an alien world of objects in which I find myself as a
> subject. My world is entirely humanised, where all things and beings and
> behaviours are located in human in-scriptions, meanings, pre-scriptions,
> functions, roles and projects. Bits of metal are money, balls in nets are
> goals, going into a certain building is work, touching lips is an act of
> love, defining financial copncepts is intellectualwork, etc. This is the
> full range of static qualities that bring us up to the 4th level that
> makes modern society possible.
These things/phenomena has little to do with the 4th level, rather
3rd. Maybe that is your point?
> With an SOM interpretation of this SQ we
> cannot get a handle on what is going on and how society and culture is
> possible.
With "a SOM interpretation of this SQ" you possibly mean the
4th. level looking down on the rest of existence, and I agree.
SOM gives us no handle, but does that help? The 4th. level is
here to stay. Only by seeing it as transcended by the MOQ brings
relief.
> Worse we become just a detached and alienated subject,
> apparently free yet powerless. MOQ is a means to understanding that
> enables us to see how SQ comes into being, but also how it is not
> inevitable or unchallengeable. That we if we can imagine an alternative we
> are free to pursue it.
OK, here you say it. But - then - do you see the 4th. level as the
subject/object divide? It looks so from the above, and if so how
do you see the (to me impossible) situation that the MOQ is a
pattern of the level it is supposed to be a relief from? If it is a
S/O pattern it must necessarily contradict itself.
Looking forward to your opinion here.
Bo
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