David B and Squad.
David, You did not receive proper attention in my post of 26
September. As said I deliberately did not fetch the Sunday mail just
to get my message posted.
However, this your last "Substance and stuff" message was so
impressive that I can't but comment it. Wow, how do you manage to
produce a veritable treaty at such short notice. I "broke a
sweat"`this time :-) I will not cover all of it - not even a small
part, it was nothing that I disagreed about - to the contrary - only
highlight one chapter - the PIRSIG FOR POPE one - because
it shows so well (that you understand) what is at stake.
> PIRSIG FOR POPE?
> It may seem like a bad idea at first. It might seem like the solution is
> to revert to some kind of Theocracy, where church and state are united
> again, but that's not what I mean here. The marriage of Christianity and
> Aristotleian cosmology may not have been the best couple, but that
> world-veiw represented an integration of social and intellecual level
> values. That is to say the mythos and the logos fit together in a way
> that denied the validity of neither. Both levels were able to "work" in
> a total picture of reality. I don't need to remind anyone here about the
> huge gulf between science and religion that exists today. Social and
> intellectual values are bound to clash, but SOM is a case of split
> personality disorder, not just a conflict of values. SOM has created a
> rift between the mythos and logos that is just plain crazy. In the MOQ
> these two can't be seperated any more that organisms can be seperated
> from inorganic Quality. In Pirsig's ontological scheme the existence of
> social values is not possible without the biological organisms that
> constitute the society. And naturally it follows that the intellectual
> level values can not exist outside of the mythos. SOM handles the first
> two levels pretty well, but its big mistake is the failure to recognize
> its own parent, the failure to properly respect the role of the mythos
> in the scientific process. It skips a level. It imagines a society a
> created by the intellect, instead of the other way around, which is the
> MOQ version. As Pirsig might put it, the intellect doesn't create
> society any more than society invents human organisms.
In a message to Marco I mentioned the part in LILA where Pirsig
speaks about Intellect's alliance with Biology in its crusade against
Society, and I said that if this was the rule, a movement out of
Intellect's grip would necessarily seek alliance with Society. I
don't know (or remember) your attitude towards the question if
QUALITY can be seen as such a movement, but look how well it fits
your (half joking, but a serious undertone) deliberations.
You open by saying that it may seem like a bad idea, but then go
on to display all the good things about the ancient times. Everything
you say is right, how many places have I read about the holistic
world view when God and humankind were sharing the same SPHERE
and what a loss it was when Renaissance and Enlightenment brought
about the gulf between religion and science.
You call the Aristotle -Christianity marriage an integration of
Intellect and Society and that is correct enough, it can also be
seen as Intellect "in the service of" Society or plainly that Social
value was still was that era's "metaphysics" (after Intellect's
relatively short dominance in Greece). However, my point is that P
of LILA says that Intellect's alliance with Biology is a bad idea, so
I guess a Q-level's (our) flirt with Society is to be regarded with
the same suspicion.This is a difficult balance act, most difficult
indeed.
Another thing. I said you hadn't delivered any verdict in the SOM-as-
Intellect case, but from the above it looks like you lean in that
direction too. For Instance this passage:
> SOM handles the first two levels pretty well, but its big mistake is the
> failure to recognize its own parent.....
SOM's parent is the Social level! That makes SOM and Intellect
identical. Exactly.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
