From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Fri Dec 19 2003 - 22:31:58 GMT
Bo: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?
DM:Paul is saying, I think, that MOQ is an intellectual and rational form
that is being suggested instead of the SOM version.
"All dictionaries gives the definition as the
power/capacity to reason .. in contrast to emotions and instincts."
but there is clearly a form of reason embodied in emotions and instinct.
MOQ tries to reason with respect to SQ patterns rather than objects.
Hence, Pirsig talks so much about a better approach to anthropology
than the sort of objectivity that banishes subjective engagement and
understanding and empathy.
"And what is reason other than distinguishing between subjective
feelings and objective facts?" But we can clearly reason with regard
to conscious contents that are related to subjective 'facts'
as constructable as objective 'facts', within a language structure.
Pirsig wants to reason wihtout the distinction between 'subjective
responses' to 'objective things'. The point is to take experience as
a whole and then to start reasoning. There are no facts that do not contain
values. No values, no experience, no world, no things.
> and that SOM is described here
> as traditional, conventional rationality.
"Correct, but "...as traditional, conventional rationality"? Are there
other kinds of rationality?" Yes, MOQ is another form of rationality,
because it analyses in terms of SQ/DQ rather than subject/object.
Just because objects are easier to measure than other aspects of
quality it does not make them the only subject of reason.
"- the MOQ took another
seventeen years - and is truly a "root expansion", so deep-rooted
that it expanded beyond intellect. " apart from pointing at DQ how
can we discuss something beyong intellect?
> > "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. "
DM:Who says science is nonsense? But there are all kinds of ways to use
reason
without doing science, e.g. philosophy, or history or biography or literary
criticism.
Science has only shown itself to be successful when applied to a stripped
down
version of experience, i.e. so-called primary qualities, not so good with
the aspects
of experience we may call secondary qualities.
> > 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."
DM: Choosing! that's always got to involve DQ. No choice equals
SQ surely. No choice equals causality, equals what we are able to
handle in terms of reason. Contingency/history/creativity/consciousness/
time/emergence/purpose/intelligence have to imply DQ. Intellect implies
intelligence which implies purpose which implies the use of reason which
implies comprrhending static patterns.
> > 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). "Not sure, it implies DQ
actively recognising its own other, i.e. SQ.
"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!. "
DM:Clearly society is constructed in a rational
way, however partially and problematically.
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