From: Joe (jhmau@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Sun Feb 22 2004 - 22:04:45 GMT
On 21 Feb 2004 11:27 PM Bo writes to Paul:
> All these quotes and philosophy history stuff you dig up is "pearl
> before swine" ...with me the swine. Even if all this is correct the
> point is that religious thinking isn't intellectual value.
>
> > Paul:
> > Well, this is obviously what is required for your theory, but
> > according to Pirsig, it is not so.
>
> It becomes difficult if this distinction is brushed off as "your
> theory". The social level is what really sets the MOQ apart from
> all "mind from biology" theories.
Hi Bo, Paul, and all,
joe: IMO Asian culture, European culture, African culture have different
styles of self-awareness. I conclude that self-awareness is non-sentient.
Faith is a non-sentient experience of existence. DQ is experience of
existence in a different way, a sentient way. DQ and Faith are different in
that DQ is also an experience of purpose (action), and DQ-SQ (quality). I
do not accept that religious thinking based on Faith is only social value.
In CA., recently we transferred social authority by a recall vote out of
nomal time for voting for governor. Voting, an intellectual value, harmed
the social fabric of CA. by being hasty and capricious.
IMO the transfer of social authority in Asian culture is a dynamic based on
the individual. I do not think that implies "mind from biology" theory.
Non-sentient self-awareness contains all moral values not in separate
levels, but in an individual sentient. The individual is accepted as the
leader through a self-aware appraisal of the appearance of the balance of
the proposed-leader's intellectual, social, organic, inorganic values. It
seems to me this acceptance is an intellectual value coming from
self-awareness.
Joe
> > He clearly states in his letter to
> > me that he considers the Upanishads to be part of the intellectual
> > level which is consistent with the line in Lila, "Following the period
> > of the Brahmanas came the Upanishadic period and the flowering of
> > Indian philosophy. Dynamic Quality reemerged within the static
> > patterns of Indian thought." [Lila p.438]
>
> It does not say ...re-emerged within the static INTELLECTUAL
> patterns of Indian thought. And in the very same letter he
> ridiculed "thinking" as a criterion of intellectual. So I think it's "a
> draw".
>
> > So, to be clear on this, are you disagreeing and saying that the
> > Upanishads do not signal the emergence of an Oriental intellectual
> > level?
>
> First, "...an Oriental intellectual level" sounds peculiar. Would it
> be possible to speak of "..an Oriental social level"? Clearly not.
> Thus intellectual value must be identical wherever. Maybe one
> may say that the Oriental culture started the intellectual process,
> but it stalled ..luckily for them.
>
> > You're starting to fudge your theory in the face of contrary evidence.
> > You now have to qualify your previously held view, "philosophy is
> > intellectual," with, "western philosophy is intellectual."
>
> I haven't used the "philosophy" term until you began wielding it,
> but again: Thinking - be it about how God has arranged things or
>
> "(Paul)..... to understand fundamental relationships between self,
> world and nothingness.
>
> is fundamentally different from intellect's SKEPTICAL
> OBJECTIVE approach to reality.
>
> > This was
> > precisely the narrow definition of intellect that I questioned in my
> > letter to Pirsig which led him to answer, "The argument that Oriental
> > cultures would not be classified as intellectual is avoided by
> > pointing out that the Oriental cultures developed an intellectual
> > level independently of the Greeks during the Upanishadic period of
> > India at about 1000 to 600 B.C." Your SOLAQI interpretation is taking
> > you further and further away from Pirsig's statements about the
> > levels.
>
> I know, but Pirsig's letter went FROM the "thinking" definition
> TOWARDS that of intellect emerging with the Greeks
> ...something that automatically makes it the S/O. The Oriental
> question is MU!
>
> > And now you are moving from flawed premises through to flawed
> > conclusion. Oriental culture has now been restricted to prehistoric
> > social patterns.
>
> Prehistoric? Social value is as present today as it ever was, and
> that of social era (when it ruled) people as senseless beasts is
> your delusion. Oriental culture may be social-value-based but
> fully capable of understanding and exploiting intellect's "virtues"
> ... their technological ingenuity has demonstrated that.
>
> > I think you've argued your way into a corner. The way I see it, the
> > "profound achievement" of Vedantic and Buddhist philosophy that Pirsig
> > talks about in Lila was precisely to resolve the Dynamic-static
> > relationship within its static intellectual patterns. Regarding dharma
> > being social, you are correct in that dharma was taken from the social
> > patterns of Vedic "rta," but it doesn't end there. Pirsig has this to
> > say in Lila, "Within the Hindu tradition dharma is relative and
> > dependent on the conditions of society. It always has a social
> > implication. It is the bond which holds society together. This is
> > fitting to the ancient origins of the term. But within modern Buddhist
> > thought dharma becomes the phenomenal world-the object of perception,
> > thought or understanding." [Lila p.439]
>
> It's no use going on about "their intellectual patterns" when the
> thinking so obvious was religious - nothing like the Semitic theism
> - but still in the social segment of the MOQ. Don't you think that
> other people - ALL PEOPLE - have made up complicated
> theories of everything?
>
> > You now define intellect as "western, non-religious philosophy," which
> > rules out much of idealism and medieval philosophy, including
> > neo-platonism, as well as people like Barfield, Coleridge and
> > countless others.
>
> Stop your distortion, I have never used "philosophy", "Western"
> or "non-religious" as definitions of intellect, but merely say that
> MOQ's intellectual level is described as the coming of SOM in
> ZMM. About Barfield & Co they have developed their own
> descriptions of the "Fall from Grace" ..and how to remedy it, but
> MOQ is best.
>
> > Furthermore, in eastern culture, I believe one cannot draw such a
> > sharp line between philosophy and theology.
>
> If that line is blurred the power of the MOQ is gone.
>
> > However, this does not
> > prevent their systems from being rigorously logical and empirical -
> > indeed some would argue that they are more logical and empirical than
> > much of western philosophy.
>
> What world view isn't/wasn't "empirical"? The Norse myth was
> built on sense observation: When lightning blinded and thunder
> rumbled it was the God Tor who struck his hammer; that was
> rigorously logical.
>
> > When your religion simply points to
> > immediately apprehended aesthetic experience as the presence of the
> > divine and your metaphysics points to immediately apprehended
> > aesthetic experience as the source of phenomena which we study then
> > the two are not in opposition.
>
> This is moq-talk applied to Eastern Culture, nor had they anything
> called "religion" different from "metaphysics", that's Q-intellect
> looking back on history. This retrospect is legitimate, all great
> theories "reconstruct" the past, and my point is that we must
> reconstruct consequently, not stop halfway between SOM and
> MOQ..
>
> IMO
> Bo
>
>
>
>
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