From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Wed Apr 23 2003 - 15:12:39 BST
Hi Wim,
> If we don't disagree, we are simply talking past each other.
That's a suspicion I've had.
> My point was
> really that the kind of values that can 'predominate' and 'be celebrated'
> are not MoQish value or static quality. To call such values 'social' or
> 'biological' or 'intellectual' creates confusion about the way static
> quality in the MoQ can and should be categorized.
Are we coming back to (what you describe as) my 'reification' of patterns?
Let us take a concrete example to help things along. Tom Cruise is a
celebrity - what is being celebrated through that process? How would you
describe them? (I'm thinking of fame, wealth, reputation in a certain field,
etc).
> For a social pattern of value to be stable and/or versatile (to embody
> 'social static quality' in the MoQish sense) it is of no relevance at all
> what 'values' (what attributes of people) are copied. We could distinguish
> social patterns of value from each other by the attributes of people that
> command the highest 'status' or 'celebrity' and that by being copied
> maintain those social patterns of value. According to me that way of
> distinguishing does not correspond to the distinction between low- and
> high-quality or between primitive and more advanced in an evolutionary
> sense, however. The relative ranking in my MoQ of a social pattern of
value
> in which sporting a bare belly dominates and one in which regular
attendance
> of Mass/Communion/Meeting for Worship/etc. dominates does not correlate
with
> a scale on which the value of these behaviors are ranked. It depends
solely
> on the way these behaviors are copied. The fact that the social pattern of
> sporting bare bellies employs modern mass media for its maintenance is for
> me a reason to rank it higher than the social pattern of attending
religious
> services.
Intriguing. I agree that the 'rankings' of the different behaviours does not
correlate with their social reproduction (that's the difference between
level 3 and 4 values isn't it?). But I would say that the bare bellies'
reproduction, compared to worship reproduction, signifies the scale of
values that are dominant in the particular society (bare bellies being more
important for that society). Do you disagree with that?
[No comments on intervening matters]
...
> 'Individuals distinguish themselves from each other by participating in
> different sets of the available motivations for action (and thus by
> different patterns of action, if they are consistent).' The quality
> experience that drives one to start participating in an intellectual
pattern
> of value (in addition to or substituting other intellectual patterns of
> value) is not an experience of static intellectual quality ('truth' or any
> other such measure of quality internal to a particular intellectual
pattern
> of value), but Dynamic Quality (in the absence of static patterns of value
> on a higher than intellectual level).
Are you comfortable with the idea that DQ is relative to the position of the
person experiencing? ie that what is SQ to one might be DQ to another?
> At the end of your 28 March post you wrote:
> 'I'm using "myth" to describe the basic presuppositions within which the
> intellect functions.'
> Then you indeed use 'myth' in a different sense than I use to do. Locating
> mythological thinking in the 4th level, but evolutionary preceding
rational
> thinking, myths for me almost by definition refer to 'low-quality
> intellectual patterns of value'.
I think I would say that mythology is level 3 thinking; level 4 thinking
operates on the basis of the relevant level 3 foundations.
> 'Basic presuppositions for rational thinking' can be taken either from
> pre-rational or from post-rational sources. In the first case thinking is
> not yet fully 'rational'. In the last case thinking is starting to go
beyond
> rational thinking and possibly beyond the intellectual level. I don't
think
> it is clarifying things to understand 'myth' in a sense so broad that it
> includes both.
Did I claim that mythology was post-rational? I agree with your point, I'm
just not sure I'm guilty of arguing against it. Doubtless you'll come up
with the relevant quotations to contradict me though!!
Cheers
Sam
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