From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Apr 07 2003 - 11:48:04 BST
Greetings to David and other Vulcans,
> Plato's Republic casts the human mind as composed of three distinct parts;
> passion, reason and temperance, the last of which is the ability to
balance
> passion and reason. A healthy mind has all three aspects working in
balance
> and harmony, just as it takes three equal legs to hold up a stool. We see
> this same trinity in the original Star Trek. Dr. McCoy is passion, Spock
the
> Vulcan is reason and Captain Kirk, who trusts both of them for advice, is
> the temperant balance between them. My point? Sam has created a straw
Vulcan
> with this depiction of reason. Real people are NOT like Spock, not even
> scientists. How did Rick put it, science is only supposed to be less
> dependent, not INdependent of emotion? Pirsig says the intellect is in at
> all independent, that it in fact depends on the social level for its very
> existence. In a very real sense the intellectual level is the social level
> PLUS something more. As Wilber puts it, the higher levels INCLUDE as well
as
> transcend the lower ones. Reason has never really been divorced from the
> rest of our humanity and lots of thinkers since Plato have recognized
that.
> Pirsig's complaints about this misconception, that intellect is
independent
> and a property of biological man with nothing in between, are complaints
> pretty specific to Modernity and SOM. To that extent, I'm with Sam. I
don't
> think this "emotionally neutral" business really describes intellect, so
> much as a certain kind of scientific materialism.
I prefer Augustine's division to Plato's (reason, memory and will). But
basically I agree with you - it's Modernism/SOM thinking that I'm objecting
to.
Nanoo nanoo
Sam
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Apr 07 2003 - 12:29:57 BST