Hi-ho Bo --
[Bo stated to Ham]:
> You don't see value as intellectual, and that's right: Intellect is
> supposed to be seen as value.
[SA stated to Bo]:
> Thus, intellect is quality. Quality is value is moral Bo, this is
> where I believe the distinction between your view and my view
> takes place.
[Bo "clarifies" for SA]:
> What the inscrutable Ham means by "not seeing value as
> intellectual" I leave to the wind, I just commented that the
> MOQ's intellect is a static value level. This and the fact that
> there are other terms for quality ("value", "morals" and
> "goodness") is plain, but how it's possible to differ over
> this point is beyond me.
>
> However, I believe that the definition of the term "intellect" is
> what all is about....
I can't help thinking that your argument is germinal to the ontology that
MoQ's author never really formulated. And I believe the problem has more to
do with "equating" terms than with defining them.
When you say "that there are other terms for quality ('value', 'morals' and
'goodness') is plain," you are throwing a bunch of human concepts into a
barrel labeled Quality and pulling them out as if they were all the same
thing. "Plainly" this is not true.
A quality is a perceived property of a thing, such as density, opacity,
roughness, or fluidity. A value is a measure of a thing's worth or utility.
A moral (principle) is an axiom that applies to human behavior in a
collective sense. Goodness is a general term for anything that is
pleasurable to the senses. And intellect is the reasoning process of the
human mind. We sometimes use these terms euphemistically with reference to
intangibles, but when we conflate apples and pears in a metaphysical
ontology, we end up with a nonsensical theory by the familiar "trash-in,
trash-out" principle of computer technology. Calling these descriptors
"levels" or "static patterns" only compounds the problem by fudging over
their differences.
[Bo]:
> Pirsig doesn't really define any level and the
> first 3 are self-evident...
>
> But when it comes to the 4th. level the problem is that the term
> has an erroneous definition among the general public different
> from the correct dictionary one. The former is more close to
> "intelligence" while the latter is the correct S/O one, and when
> this error is transferred to the MOQ it creates confusion. My
> Oxford Advanced says about INTELLECT:
>
> "Power of the mind to reason contrasted with feeling and
> instinct."...
>
> In other words intellect is the distinction between what's objective
> and what's subjective - the S/O. I've pointed to since God knows
> when, but it's water on a goose's back. Intellect to you (all) is all
> mental activity, thus when an animal shows great prowess and
> people of old made up mythologies around their social/emotional
> reality it was "intellect".
No, Bo. AWARENESS is the distinction between what's objective and
subjective. Intellect is the mental process of conceptualizing experienced
relations, whether material, social, or emotional. What I suspect you want
to do is codify the idea suggested (but never really postulated) by Pirsig
that Intellect exists on a supra-human plane as a body of intelligence which
is accessible to man but not a human function. And that is an invalid
epistemology. Intellect is not collective knowledge or intelligence; it is
a relational process that is exclusive to the individual human. It simply
does not exist apart from human cognizance. And it has no ontological
relevance to quality or value.
Not so inscrutable,
Ham
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
