From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 04:04:39 GMT
Paul and All
17 Dec. you wrote:
> This post is a response to Bo’s assertion that his SOLAQI fits better
> with Pirsig’s previous writing than the definitions given in Lila’s
> Child and correspondence, particularly Pirsig’s statement that the MOQ
> is also an intellectual pattern.
This part I will comment lower down.
> This post is simply a series of excerpts from ZMM and one from Lila
> which require no commentary from me other than to say that rationality
> is clearly part of the intellectual level
I'm not totally sure of what this is supposed to say. Do you
understand me as saying that rationality isn't part of intellect?
Anyway, the SOLAQI says that intellect IS rationality - all of it -
every last bit, and I repeat that it is the only definition that fits
Pirsig's statement that 'intellect' was so obvious that he felt no
need to define it. All dictionaries gives the definition as the
power/capacity to reason .. in contrast to emotions and instincts.
And what is reason other than distinguishing between subjective
feelings and objective facts?
> and that SOM is described here
> as traditional, conventional rationality.
Correct, but "...as traditional, conventional rationality"? Are there
other kinds of rationality?
> I think this series of quotes
> show that Pirsig conceived of the MOQ as a "root expansion" of
> rationality and, as such, is also part of the intellectual level.
ZMM is chiefly a reconstruction of Phaedrus' ideas plus an effort to
construct a Quality Metaphysics - the MOQ took another
seventeen years - and is truly a "root expansion", so deep-rooted
that it expanded beyond intellect.
There is nothing in the ZMM quotes I disagree with, let me just
dwell on the LILA one.
> > "The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection
> > of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it
> > is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science
> > are of a higher evolutionary order than the old biological and
> > social patterns.
Yes, for instance this! Science is intellect, and science is
RATIONALITY par excellance, it's my very point. If you say (that
Pirsig says) that science is just ONE set of patterns I answer that
there can't be any intellectual pattern that says that
science/rationality is nonsense, all patterns of the same level must
be in agreement.
> > But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that
> > Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant
> > mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment
> > over a confusing, inconclusive one-is another matter altogether.
RATIONALITY is fully capable of choosing the most rational
solution. I see DQ engaged in bigger tasks than meddling with
what static value is supposed to handle.
> > Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific
> > truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to
> > suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress
> > scientific method. Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It
> > is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself."
Here again science is representative for the intellectual level - of
truth (which by default means objectivity). And it is also stressed
that intellect suppresses all efforts to "expand beyond rationality".
However, to present it as DQ is what keeps scientists from faking
experiments is wrong, that's intellect's rationality keeping society's
subjectivity in check!.
IMO.
Bo
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