From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Oct 04 2003 - 16:20:26 BST
Paul,
> [Scott:]
> > "The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces ideas, which
> > produce what we know as matter.
>
> How can Quality produce ideas if it is not Intellect?
>
> [Paul:]
> Quality produces ideas; intellect is the manipulation of those ideas.
Our intellect manipulates those ideas and creates new ones. In the latter
case is where we are connected to Intellect, as for example in Poincare's
mathematical insights. (Many of our "creations" are not of this sort -- the
difference being what Coleridge refers to in his fancy/Imagination
distinction.). To restrict intellect to the manipulation of existing ideas
is first unintelligible, since through manipulation one can create new
ideas, and second reveals Pirsig's nominalist prejudice. The ancinet
philosophers had no problem conceiving (and in some cases, like Plotinus, of
experiencing) the Divine Intellect. Though it would fit in so well with the
rest of the MOQ, Pirsig prefers to impoverish the concept of intellect by
assigning it solely to SQ.
In any case, your reply doesn't answer my question. That which produces
ideas has to be more than just Good. In conventional language our words for
it are "intellect", "reason", and "thinking". Not "value", "quality" or
"good".
> [Paul:]
> Firstly, he says value is the preselection of what becomes consciousness
> before it is possible to be thought about. It is not an "observation of
> value", it is value that is observation. Observation creates the
> "observer" and the "observed".
I agree with this. But in the case of ideas, one has Thinking, creating the
thinker and the thought. Ultimately they are the same (since I hypothesize
only one Ultimate.) But this is why Pirsig's treatment of "subject" and
"object" is a disaster. For Observation really and truly creates the
observer and the observed, and they are qualitatively different. They are
not both SQ, since SQ is observable, but the observer as observer is not.
Instead they exist in mutual contradiction. The same goes for thinker and
thought. All experience has this irreducible tripartite form.
> Secondly, he spent a whole book demonstrating that Quality is
> "recognised" without intellect. This also applies to recognising Quality
> that produced intellectual patterns. Remember his teaching experiment
> "what is quality in thought and statement?" in Bozeman?
He simply assumed it in the beginning. The brujo story produced the idea of
the initial split into DQ and SQ. So far so good. But in the next paragraph
is:
"When A. N. Whitehead wrote that "mankind is driven forward by dim
apprehensions of things too obscure for existing language", he was writing
about Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge
of reality, the source of all things, the completely simple and always new."
My question is where did the "pre-intellectual" come from? It appears to be
related to the phrase "too obscure for existing language." But to have a dim
apprehension of something that escapes existing language means that one is
thinking dynamically. One has an intimation from Intellect. One has a
non-verbalized idea and one will either change the language to verbalize it
or come to the conclusion that it is beyond all language. So why does he
call this "pre-intellectual"? In my view because of a nominalist prejudice:
he is convinced that all language and thinking is "flatus voci", all SQ,
always merely tacked on to a really real non-linguistic, non-thinking,
pre-existing universe of things and events. This makes the MOQ nothing more
than materialism plus God.
- Scott
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