From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Mon Jan 26 2004 - 23:40:39 GMT
Hi Platt, (Paul),
>> Platt said:
>>> A question still remains unanswered, however. What level "perceives" that
>>> the intellectual level contains "many sets" of intellectual patterns of
>>> varying quality? An eye cannot see itself.
>
> Steve said previously:
>> It is not a "level" that perceives. Experience or awareness cannot itself
>> be a type of static pattern of experience. If Quality creates the static
>> patterns that represent our perceptions, it makes sense to me that Quality
>> is synonymous with awareness. Say hello to now!
Platt said:
> In another post you wrote ". . . the dolphin could not perceive any value
> in the pattern of spoken symbols . . ." and attributed its learning
> ability to the biological (instinct) level and perhaps the social
> (copying) level. So, in the dolphin's case it would seem its awareness is
> a function of its level...
Steve says:
Or you could say that it's level is a function of its awareness which is a
way of saying that Quality creates static patterns.
Platt said:
>yet you say its awareness "cannot itself be a
> type of static pattern of experience."
>
> It seems to me that awareness (Quality) at all levels is closely
> associated with the level in which the awareness occurs.
Steve:
Let me first explain how I understand awareness and quality. Starting with
my own experience or awareness understood as Quality, I infer other value
relationships in everything I experience. These value relationships are the
MOQ's static patterns. Thinking of these patterns of experience as
manifestations of Quality suggests that everything I experience is itself
also awareness.
I distinguish directly experienced value (i.e. Quality) and inferred value
(i.e. static patterns of quality and dynamic quality) where inference is
itself a type of direct experience (i.e. participation in intellectual value
patterns). To actually be Quality is to value or to be aware. Pirsig says
something to suggest this sort of internal/external view of Quality in ZAMM
where he relates Quality and care, though I may be 'subtly slipping back
into subject-object thinking.' Let me know if you think I am.
That said, I agree that "awareness (Quality) at all levels is closely
associated with the level in which the awareness occurs" because inferred
types of patterns can be equated with types of awareness.
>A fish cannot see
> the ocean it lives in. So, to escape from a one level of awareness to be
> able to look at, examine and judge that level (as we are able to examine
> and judge a dolphin's awareness) one must, it seems to me, rise to a
> higher level.
To infer patterns of any kind, one must rise to the intellectual level since
inferences are intellectual constructs. I don't think there is a need to
invoke a higher level to explain how intellectual level entities are aware
of intellectual patterns. Intellect is defined as the skilled manipulations
of abstract symbols that stand for patterns of experience--any pattern of
experience. Intellect's symbols can stand for other intellectual patterns
as well as they can stand for other types of patterns of experience.
Thinking about thinking is still thinking. However, I agree that having
philosophical sophistication is to be more aware, but I would call it a
higher stage (state, level) within the intellectual level of awareness.
> What would you think of calling a level that could look down and evaluate
> the patterns of the intellectual level a level of mystic awareness?
I think evaluation of intellectual patterns happens on the intellectual
level as explained above. I also think a higher level above the
intellectual could never be defined because definition is an intellectual
activity. A lower level (intellect) can't contain a hypothesized higher one
(mystical).
Thanks,
Steve
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