From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 06:24:07 BST
Hi Scott.
Thanks for treating my post so thoroughly ;-). Never mind I love your
"Sermons of the Mount", you are at you best when not disturbed by
arguments. I have to snip off bits and pieces to make this within limits,
but you know what you have written.
26 Sep. you wrote:
> In tracing the argumentation of the MOQ, I see the fundamental error
> to be one that is shared with SOM, and that is nominalism.
No, not after the intellectual level is understood in its QUALITY form.
> (As an
> aside, I agree with Sam that SOM is a late bloomer. The Greeks and the
> medievals were not SOMists, for they were not nominalists.) Nominalism
> is the position that what there is are things and events, or
> particulars (if one is William of Ockham, the first major nominalist,
> one will add God to what exists). Words and concepts are considered to
> be more particulars that "stand for" other particulars.
The MOQ is on the realist side ...if you are bent on using that
template.
> This position only became possible with the loss of original
> participation (as described by Barfield in Saving the Appearances).
Barfield calls the great change "loss of original participation". The
MOQ postulates a similar change as the advent of the intellectual
level. And this is also a loss. (ref. my "cultural approch", the old
(social) order being scattered by the new scepticism ...etc)
> Participation is an extra-sensory link between subject and object.
Only a nit-picker comment: Before the change/loss there was no
S/Odivide, thus it is superflous to speak of any link (here YOU
suddenly turn nominalist), but never mind!
> In
> original participation, that link was experienced as something "on the
> other side" of the phenomenon, what we might call the spirit of the
> thing, if we experienced it. (Note, where something like this still
> occurs, I think, is in listening to music.). With the loss of original
> participation, objects became objects, that is "just there". With
> original participation, the perceived object was experienced as a
> representation of the spirit "behind" it. Note the word
> "representation". This means that the things perceived were perceived
> as representing something else.
Yes, and this marries Barfield and Pirsig? The loss of "original
participation" is the S/O split. The observations you make are an exact
match of what Pirsigs says, f.ex. regarding physical objects where the
"spirit behind" static value is Dynamic Value.
> With a little thought, we can recover that notion that the thing
> perceived is a ...snip ..... are just more things and events. Hence
> Kant. While he recognized that we put together the perceived object,
> he could only conceive that what might lie behind it (the
> thing-in-itself) was, well, another thing.
Is Kant you man or? Your reasoning here becomes hard to follow.
> There is another reason for the hold nominalism has on us, and that is
> that our words and concepts can be wrong, that we can debate over
> which concepts are "correct" or "most useful", that words change
> meaning, and so on. I will return to this later.
Phew! Good.
> The non-nominalist (back in the 14th century they were called
> "realists", but since then that word has come to mean something
> completely different) is one who understands the "stands for" relation
> differently. Pirsig uses it in the nominalist way, as in:
> "For purposes of MOQ precision, let's say that the intellectual
> level is the same as mind. It is the collection and manipulation of
> symbols, created in the brain, that stand for patterns of experience."
> Here a word (or more generally, symbol) stands for patterns of
> experience. While superficially true, this hides something, namely
> that "patterns of experience" is not experience.
I agree, this sounds nominalist, it should have read: "Intellect is the
value of distinguishing between symbols and experience".
> Experience is always
> experience of particulars, but a pattern of experience is a concept.
> For the non-nominalist, a particular, like a word, stands for the
> concept. Without the concept there can be no particular, for without a
> concept (a system, a pattern, a language in a more general sense than
> English) the particular cannot be picked out of chaos.
I have problems following you ...technically I mean - but as we agree
so much I guess this is right too.
> The nominalist, especially after the nineteenth century, would have us
> believe that concepts got tacked on to a world of ..........snip
Here I managed to follow and am impressed - no sarcasm - but still
see the MOQ as purely "realist". (Quality is Realism)
> Well, arguments can go on and on, so let me stop here and just
> summarize a non-nominalist metaphysics as it compares to the MOQ. In
> brief, instead of placing Quality as the first principle, I would
> place Intellect there instead. (Or the word Reason, as Coleridge did,
> or the word Logos as John the Evangelist did).
I understand, but once the "symbol manipulating-intellect" is modified,
everything is straightened out. DQ is your "intellect" (don't you think
"intelligence" is better?), it is "logos" ...whatever. Pirsig says: "Quality
is the oldest idea there is".
Please - if you resond - let me have your opinion on my effort to fuse
the various definitions of intellect or (if you have decided to drop the
MOQ) your opinion on the comparison of Barfield's "loss of original
participation" with the birth of intellect (and "loss" through "gaining"
the S/O value)?
Sincerely
Bo
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