From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Sep 28 2003 - 13:58:39 BST
Hi Bo (Scott mentioned),
Huzzah! I think we solidly agree.
> Language-derived!!! ...No problems there There was something
> more to it about "..taking place in the brain and ..standing for
> experience" and as this is the the very essence of language. The salient
> point is that Pirsig says that VOICES can easily be interchanged with
> THOUGHTS and this solves the whole quandary.
Voices (and/or images) solves the whole quandary. Agree! (Images
require division, e.g. figure/ground. See below.)
> Don't get me wrong dear Platt, but what I fear is that some don't want
> to hear about any "solution" along such much too ordinary-sounding
> lines. Intellect of the MOQ is supposed to inherit the "spiritual"
> position it has in SOM. Hope I am wrong.
No fear on my part dear Bo. I'm no Berkeleian. I don't buy the
assumption that the human "mind" is a pale reflection of some larger,
spiritual Mind, a position I think Scott takes..
> . . . when Pirsig (in ZMM mostly) discusses these
> flashes of insights and intuitions it is the impact of QUALITY he wants
> to demonstrate. After postulating a DQ/SQ divide it can't be his
> intention that the intellectual level to assume DQ's role? Intellect is
> a static level and its patterns - be they thoughts" - have to be along
> more conventional lines. Admittedly, he speaks of pre-intellectual
> perception in ZMM and intellect is what "filters" experience at this
> lofty stage, but that it should be the sole "antenna" for DQ? How could
> the static sequence progress at all?
> As I see it intellect can only present reality through its static grid.
> And as the various thinkers/writers testify, it is a bleak remnant of
> the REAL experience.
How true.
PLATT:
> > The intellectual level is better described
> > as man’s ability to use complex symbolic systems to represent
> > experience.
BO:
> Wow! How come we suddenly agree? With a small twist: Intellect's
> value is that of a division between symbols and experience.
With a another small twist, intellect's value is that of division,
period. Experience is a continuum, indivisible. Intellect divides the
continuum symbolically, laying as it were a grid over experience so
intellect can deal with it. Experience must be patterned before
intellect can even begin to represent it. Whether the division is S/O
or figure/ground or DQ/SQ isn't the issue when it comes to
understanding intellect. The value of intellect is the /. We divide to
survive.
PLATT:
> > But, if you say SOM dominates the intellectual level today among
>> the
> > masses of mankind, especially those in the Western world, I
> > wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, humanistic SOM cannot explain
> > values at all except in touchy-feely bromides like "Don’t be cruel."
BO:
> Agree! Hope you will keep commenting
As I see it, the only thing left to agree on is whether the
intellectual level in the MOQ can be said to be the value of symbolic
division of the Quality continuum, or whether it should be represented
as the dominance of the divisive SOM as in your SOLAQI. I prefer the
former as being more fundamental, but have no serious objection to the
latter because it highlights the problem of modern day materialistic
humanism that must be challenged if mankind is to have a chance of
surviving at all. (I see an opening for that challenge in Darwinian
theory.) Furthermore, SOLAQI has the advantage of distinctly separating
the intellectual level from the social whereas the value of division
alone goes back to man's earliest beginnings.
Anyway, do you see why I think we agree?
Finally, a question. Do you see Quality as a "higher power," that is, a
form of the spirit or the divine?
Best regards,
Platt
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