Posters and lurkers of the Lila Squad!
DAVID BUCHANAN
wrote:
> The following quote is from chapter 22 of Lila and is on page 277 in
> the Bantam HB edition.
> "Now, it should be stated at this point that the MOQ supports this
> dominance of intellect over society. It says intellect is a higher
> level of evolution than society; therefore, it is a more moral level
> than society. It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it
> is for a society to destroy an idea. But having said this, the MOQ
> goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that has been
> appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is
> that subject-object science has no provision for morals.
> Subject-Object science is only concerned with facts."
Yes, I know and acknowledge this.
> This quote seems to get at the heart of the matter. I think it is
> pretty clear that Pirsig is saying SOM is a defective intellectual
> pattern. And it seems safe to say that his MOQ is designed to
> correct that defect. If SOM is considered equal to the intellectual
> level itself, then it becomes inescapable and so the MOQ would be
> quite pointless. Notice how he says its a defective intellectual
> "pattern" that's been appointed and he does not refer to SOM as a
> "level". It seems to me that there are many different intellectual
> patterns within the intellectual level, just as there are many
> different languanges and cultures within the social level, just as
> there are many species within the biological level. See what I mean?
Yes, David, I do see - perfectly. I also admit that the LILA
quotation above - and many more - show that you have Pirsig's
backing in looking upon the SOM as merely ONE intellectual pattern,
but don't you agree that the Truth vs Good struggle of ZAMM sounds
like a more massive shift than one idea .....and, after all, in the
letter to me he says that he sees it as intellect versus social
conformity. Intellect the whole ...and nothing but ...!? If social
value can be compressed into "conformity" (a splendid term) why not
intellectual value into subject-objectivity?
You introduce the most crucial objection against the SOLAQI:
> If SOM is considered equal to the intellectual level itself, then it
> becomes inescapable and so the MOQ would be quite pointless.
I have the remedy for that, but let's dwell a little longer on the
Intellectual level. We have a relatively clear image of the
Inorganic, Organic and Social levels, but it has been
difficult to define Intellect ever since this discussion started.
At first it looks like the ability to think - the mental - or simply
"mind", but as I see it that definition meets with difficulties. One
is that there is mind at the social level. This can however be
countered by pointing to the MOQ tenet that the parent level provides
the base for the next, worse is it that the mental (neural activity)
is part of the biological realm too.
NOT AS MIND!!! I hear the protests, but mindlessness at the
Biolological level makes it - and ourselves at that level - into
the Cartesian automatons - complicated but dead matter. This is
counter to the very Q idea. However I won't pursue this further until
I see your definition of the Q-Intellect.
*********************************
DAVID L THOMAS (You are DLT of old? "Strawdog
bites...") wrote:
> "The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship
> between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation
> of all things." 25th ZAMM pg 374.
A most clear and well-documented message Dave, and I will
probably be d.. to repeat that the above is from ZAMM and written
before the conception of the MOQ. Likewise the statement that....
> According to the MoQ these patterns "emerge as a relationship
> between man and his experience" as an interaction between his static
> patterns and dynamic quality. This is a quality event which,if it
> latches, changes his static patterns,if it does not, no significant
> changes occurs.
Is it really according to the MOQ? I think it's still from ZAMM which
I regard a preliminary stage of the Quality Metaphysics.
I do (for example) fully accept that time and space are Intellectual
patterns and unessential to the lower levels, but that the lower
levels are creations of the Intellect sounds like SOM's solipsism
("everything a mind game". Hi John Beasley!!) reintroduced. I
would like the Q-Intellect to be something different.
All right it may look like you (too) have Pirsig's backing, there was
a quotation from a letter to Anthony McWatt that Risky-biz Roger
brought into the "Reality & Observation" (Sat.21 Aug 1999) thread at
the MD.
> "the intellectual pattern that says "there is an external world of things
> out there which are independent of intellectual patterns". That is one
> of the highest quality intellectual patterns there is. And in this highest
> quality intellectual pattern, external objects appear historically before
> intellectual patterns... But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself
> comes before the external world, not after, as is commonly presumed
> by the materialists."
This sounds like Intellect-as-mind and also SO-as-merely-one-
particular-Intellectual pattern, but also easy prey for moq-hunters
who may point to a circular argument, bootstrapping or whatever it
is called. This particuar quotation I have thought so much about that
my head spins.
> I conclude that the intellectural level emerged in many different
> cultures in many different ways a long long time ago. And it only
> took us to 2000 AD to find out about it.
I agree. Even if I claim that the events around the Greek thinkers
may be regarded as the emergence ('surfacing' perhaps) of the
Intellectual level, it is not its BIRTH, only when it liberated
itself from the Social level in earnest. Its roots are far back in
the Social past. Language primarily.
***************************
CNTRYFORCE
I liked your post greatly, you sound like yours truly in the
years after my encounter of the nth kind with Pirsig's ideas :-).
Also do I agree with the part about... "moving huge chunks of
preexisting thought patterns". That's Pirsig's great feat having
zipped the whole SOM complex into a sublevel of his MOQ (as I see it
that is).
Only one 'but'. It's dangerous to declare truth incompatible with
good. I guess that's my motive for wanting to - first - make the
Truth vs Good struggle of ZAMM into the Intellect vs Society conflict
of the MOQ, and - second - to equate SOM and the Intellectual level.
That way truth (the distinction between objective and subjective)
becomes the highest static good, only subordinate to DQ itself.
PS
One private correspondent of mine (Hi Peter) asked the highly
relevant question what the Sophists said or wrote that made them so
pivotal to Pirsig. I don't know if that will bring us too far from
the topic, but if someone knows and Diana allows...?
Thanks for your attention.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
