From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 09:28:43 BST
Hi David
You fence left and right like a silent movie hero and I really should not
join the "bandits" because we agree on one crucial issue. However ...
On 26 July you wrote:
> Oh, I see. I didn't realize that you're a man of such faith. No wonder
> we can't seem to agree about this. I take metaphysics to be merely
>a branch of philosophy, not reality itself. Sorry if that bugs you.
I invest so much in you because I have this hunch that you are
"reasonable" ...for instance this from your post (27th) to Rick.
> dmb says:
> Sorry. Again, I just don't see it. His comments are about a fully
> developed human being. I don't think Pirsig is saying that all people
>are intellectual.
You return to the S/O-intellect as soon as not speaking to me. No
human being can be anti -(manipulation of symbols)-intellectual, while
an individual may to not be able/willing to pursue objectivity at the cost
of social "face", or for a whole culture to be social-value focussed yet
harboring great thinkers and writers.
> In fact, I'm sure that elsewhere he qualifies this assertion
> by saying something like "or at least a POTENTIAL source of idea".
>I think the assertion that all humans are able to percieve intellectual
>values defies way too much of what Pirsig says about the conflict of
>values, the codes, the evolutionary relationship between the levels.
If we drop the "thinking" intellect it's possible not to value intellectual
values, otherwise the Neanderthals were staunch intellectuals and
that surely defies the tenets of the MOQ you point to.
Back to our exchange ..in a last attempt.
DMB:
> I know. You think the MOQ is different to be at a whole new level. I
> disagree. It seems obvious to me. The MOQ uses the same data as
> does SOM, respects empiricism, rationality and clarity. The
> difference between them seems far less than the difference between
> a plant cell and a chimp, which are both on the same level.
A level is far off, let's just keep it a rebel intellectual pattern. About
"..using the same data". All levels uses its parent's data, but for a
totally different purpose. Plants and animals are in symbiosis, but two
metaphysics can't co-exist!. Pirsig tucks the S/O divide under the
MOQ in the known manner, but in that capacity stripped of its "M".
DMB:
> Thought-intellect has no static character? Thinking is a facet of DQ?
> Huh? I honestly can't make any sense of that.
Not so fast. Thinking is per definition limitless, one may principally
think of anything, and limitless=dynamic!. However, one may say that
intellect is a special way of thinking, but then society is another way,
biology yet another and "inorgany" the original way of thinking, but in
that case we have a Metaphysics of Thought which is what I mean by
"thinking a facet of DQ".
> As to the violations of
> principle, which I can only BARELY understand... On the problem of
> containers, I'd just say that the MOQ tries to describe the world and
> all we know about it in terms of levels of static patterns. Why should
> that description be exluded from the world?
For the reason that the DQ is outside the static "world". The MOQ is
the whole DQ/SQ aggregate and this being a static patter looks like
serious containment problem to me.
> Of course the world is
> much larger than any description of it. I fail to see how this
> violates any kind of principle or logic. The answer to the other
> problem isn't very different. The MOQ is a static description of a
> dynamic reality. The reality is dynamic, but the description of it
> NEEDS to be static. Otherwise we would not have anything about >which to disagree.
This comes as from an "automatic answering machines", but in this
metaphysical discussion nothing is "matter of course" . At some point
the "description" is so gut-reactionary that it IS the world.
In my opinion ...
Bo
Afterword:
Your excellent defense of the Social Reality is - whether you like it or
not - also a defense of the S/O-intellect. Again and again you point to
the pre-historic past and dismiss the silly - what was it - "socially
repetitive behaviour" as the source of the Egyptian culture, Babylon,
Niniveh ..etc. All this - and all LILA - points to the intellectual level as
emerging with the early Greeks and thus being the S/O value, but
when it comes to accepting your own conclusions you lose
momentum and lapses to the impossible "non-s/o intellectual
patterns". What these patterns are I will never understand.
Mathemathics and/or calculation? When stone age people calculated
things it was for social purposes and when a modern day scientist do
mathematis it is for intellectual purposes. There is no such "in itself" in
the MOQ.
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