Re: LS Re: SOM and the intellect
BO CONTINUES HIS END-OF-MONTH SWEEP AND TRIES TO COME TO AN AGREEMENT WITH MAGNUS' POST OF 17 SEPTEMBER WHERE HE WROTE: I'd like to add the following to Diana's map metaphor. If you think about actually *drawing* a physical map on paper, then there's no way you can include both the table and the map on the map. You could always take one step back and see that the map is a map of the table and the map. However, and this is what I think is the most powerful, (and sometimes too powerful), thing about the intellectual level: It's recursive. It enables us to include something in itself. I can think, but I can also think about what I just thought, and then think about that... That's a truly unique feature, you can't have a cup of coffee inside itself. You can't have any other type of pattern inside itself. I hoped that your input was in support of my assertion that two metaphysics can't coexist (the map metaphor) but I am not sure, particularly when you refer to Q-intellect as thinking (about thinking) I got the sinking feeling that it became "mind" and that ideas, theories - including various metaphysics - slosh around inside this MENTAL "cup". Something you afterwards declare impossible, and I think you are right.. But then again, it's sometimes too powerful. We sometimes get confused and we can intellectually create all kinds of strange contradictions using it. But the MoQ says that any such contradiction is only an intellectual construct, it does not correctly reflect the other patterns it supposedly tries to. For example, the SOM is such an intellectual construct. But since we can find contradictions in it, it does not correctly reflect the "reality" it tries to. My guess is that the Greeks were blinded by this powerful intellectual level and made a too static system in which there were no room for future changes. So when quantum mechanics turns up and blurs the, until then crystal clear, border between subjects and objects, it strikes the ostrich pose and pretends it rains. It would have been neat to see what the Greeks would have done if they'd known about quantum mechanics. It also makes me wonder if the sophists knew something about it - or something similar, or if they just thought SOM sounded boring. To ask what the Greeks would have done if they'd known about quantum mechanicsis like asking how much the Romans could have expanded their empire had they had automobiles. Evolution HAVE to go by steps. To close up, I wouldn't say that SOM *is* the intellectual level, but it sure is one of the first entities that really used it. Perhaps I am picking nits, but I can't understand what "it" (in the last line above) is beside its VALUE. What strange vessel is Intellect that it can be used by SOM, perhaps eptied of it and filled with other contents? No such capacity is connected with the other static levels; they are their value. Q-biology "used" by several competing biological patterns? (Life is life be it an amoeba or a human being) It doesn't make Q-sense ..to me. Bo MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
Re: LS Re: SOM and the intellect
Diana, Bo and Squad But, Bo, the MOQ is just a metaphysics - a map of reality. If I draw a map, say, of my desk and everything on it including the map, then the map would include the map. I don't see a problem with that. Good point. The cartoon of a hand with a pencil drawing itself comes to mind and I would happily accept such an argument but we have the Strawsons of this world to cope with. Magnus Berg always stressed the universality of a metaphysics, there's nothing outside it. The map metaphor suggests an (objective) reality that we constantly keep mapping, but Pirsig doesn't use it that way in the map PROJECTION analogue. He merely says that when at the poles you have to use a polar projection. I'd like to add the following to Diana's map metaphor. If you think about actually *drawing* a physical map on paper, then there's no way you can include both the table and the map on the map. You could always take one step back and see that the map is a map of the table and the map. However, and this is what I think is the most powerful, (and sometimes too powerful), thing about the intellectual level: It's recursive. It enables us to include something in itself. I can think, but I can also think about what I just thought, and then think about that... That's a truly unique feature, you can't have a cup of coffee inside itself. You can't have any other type of pattern inside itself. But then again, it's sometimes too powerful. We sometimes get confused and we can intellectually create all kinds of strange contradictions using it. But the MoQ says that any such contradiction is only an intellectual construct, it does not correctly reflect the other patterns it supposedly tries to. For example, the SOM is such an intellectual construct. But since we can find contradictions in it, it does not correctly reflect the "reality" it tries to. My guess is that the Greeks were blinded by this powerful intellectual level and made a too static system in which there were no room for future changes. So when quantum mechanics turns up and blurs the, until then crystal clear, border between subjects and objects, it strikes the ostrich pose and pretends it rains. It would have been neat to see what the Greeks would have done if they'd known about quantum mechanics. It also makes me wonder if the sophists knew something about it - or something similar, or if they just thought SOM sounded boring. To close up, I wouldn't say that SOM *is* the intellectual level, but it sure is one of the first entities that really used it. Magnus MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
Re: LS Re: SOM and the intellect
Diana and Group plus a PS for Denis Poisson Diana, you started your analysis of this month's topic by writing: Surveying the responses it seems we all agree that the Greeks marked an emergence of the subject-object metaphysics. With their separation of rhetoric from dialectic and the good from the true they forced the subjective to be separate and inferior to the objective. This leads to a metaphysics where subjects occupy a world that is separate and irreconcilable with the world of objects. We all also seem to agree that while the Greeks were the main villains, the idea was probably born a long time before and gradually worked its way into the culture. Language because of its habit of making distinctions between objects was probably the initial cause of this (as we discussed in the early days of the LS http://www.moq.org/old_lilasquad/9709/0039.html). Thanks for accessing things so coolly and thoroughly, even visiting our vaults to find one of the old posts (my browser refused to open it :-(). To use Ken's expression my head often spins over the complexity of the Intellectual level, at times I think I have found the solution with my Intellect=SOM, at other times ...well. He then goes on to offer advantages of thinking like this. (But why should we consider the advantages? Are we to accept it because it would be useful if we did? That's not a good reason.) "Useful" sounds so utilitarian (Dictionary: Characterized by usefulness rather than by beauty, truth, goodness) why not VALUABLE? Pirsig says that the MOQ doesn't ban subject-objectivity from its universe and says that InorganicOrganic (=objects) and SocialIntellectual (=subjects). At first I accepted this (and I understand what Pirsig means), but it may mislead people to view the two lower leves as matterish, and the two upper as mindish. One part of the MOQ can't be objective and another subjective, the only viable way is to see the subject/object aggregate as one separate value level. But, Bo, the MOQ is just a metaphysics - a map of reality. If I draw a map, say, of my desk and everything on it including the map, then the map would include the map. I don't see a problem with that. Good point. The cartoon of a hand with a pencil drawing itself comes to mind and I would happily accept such an argument but we have the Strawsons of this world to cope with. Magnus Berg always stressed the universality of a metaphysics, there's nothing outside it. The map metaphor suggests an (objective) reality that we constantly keep mapping, but Pirsig doesn't use it that way in the map PROJECTION analogue. He merely says that when at the poles you have to use a polar projection. I see two aspects to it. The first is the values of the intellectual level, namely freedom, democracy, human rights. To me these seem to arise from the idea of the Subject as the starting place of reality and the most important value of all. Exactly, but a subject invokes an object. So, I find the prosecution has presented inconclusive evidence. (Murmur of protest). However. The question is interesting. It's not enough for me to answer it just by saying Bo hasn't proved it. I feel I have to say why it's wrong and in order to do that I need to know what's right. (Murmur of consent). I keep asking myself, what is the key to the intellectual level? The second is reason. How do I define reason? Uh, reaches for dictionary "intellectual faculty by which conclusions are drawn from premises" "express in logical or argumentative form" ugh, let's try logic: "a science of reasoning", "use of or ability in argument", okay, argue: "maintain by reasoning". Great. Apparently the Oxford dictionary doesn't know what reason is. Oh for goodness sake, I'll do it myself. If there are no camels in Germany, are there camels in Berlin? Reason says no. Why? Because Berlin is in Germany so a fact that applies to Germany also applies to Berlin. Why? Because you cannot have two truths about the same thing. Why? Because there is only one truth. The logic is valid. The Q-Intellect is somehow the realm where manipulation of words/ideas/concepts/abstractions by rules of language/logic is possible. I once launched the static sequence as an increasing "abstraction" (the quotation marks because it's without any concrete connotation!). It went something like this. Matter is the first abstraction of the Dynamic Quality. Biology is the next in the sense that life is the capability to read molecular patterns as pain or pleasure, food or poison etc. Society - in its turn - is an abstraction of biological abstractions, reading bodily postures as (signs meaning) benevolence or anger and a million other things. Intellect is the - yet -final turn of the abstraction screw, lifting social signs from the immediate to a general sphere (also known as "mind") where they can be treated by the logic of syntax and grammar and tossed around
