Ham
The last few days of this discussion have helped me understand what
all is about so I open a new thread.
Me earlier:
> > 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.
Do you mean I have formulated MOQ's real cause clearer than Pirsig
or ....?
> 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
"Throwing concepts into a barrel and pulling them out as something
else " is not a bad analogy of the "Copernican Revolution" analogy of
how everything may change, yet remain the same that Kant used
about his philosophy and Pirsig about the MOQ. My best practical
example is the points of light in the sky that we know as
stars/planets/satellites ..etc. were gods and goddesses to the
Ancients. The sky hasn't changed one iota, yet changed
fundamentally.
> 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.
Have you read ZAMM at all? Pirsig found that the Quality term didn't fit
the S/O template (the two dilemma horns) he considered the objective
one the worst - and maybe it was in the late fifties, but not nowadays
after Quantum Theory ("Schrödinger's Cat" paradox). Subjectivity
and/or spiritualism seems the talk of the town, thus subjectivity is the
great obstacle to the MOQ.
> And intellect is the reasoning process of the
> human mind.
Let intellect wait a little bit. After fending off both horns he proposed
the thesis that Quality is prior to subjects and objects (If this particular
point is dubious we may return to it) His Quality of this stage is much
like what James and later Dewey proposed, but in contrast to them
Pirsig went further and worked out a new metaphysics based on
Quality. OK, the first sketch was a Pre-intellectual/Intellectual where
Intellect=a subject becoming aware of objects.
So you see, YOUR starting point is the intellectual part of this early
"moq". And, further, you may now understand my insisting on this
understanding of "intellect" should have followed into the full-fledged
MOQ to become its 4th. level
> 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.
Don't be so wise-guyish.
> [Bo]:
> > 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.
Stone Age people were just as aware as ourselves and
"conceptualized" their experience (made what we call myths around it)
But they were not intellectuals, did not hold discussions over issues
like the said lights in the sky, if they really (objectively seen) were gods
or something else, there were no skeptics who doubted the current
theory .... etc. because these weren't theories about reality, rather
reality itself. Have you heard of latter day "social level" people -
muslims f.ex. - discuss if Allah really exist? He is their reality.
> 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.
What I warn against codifying is to confuse intellect and intelligence.
The rest of your objections I don't know if relevant or not. In the MOQ
intellect, and the the rest of the levels, are neither sub or supra
anything, existence is value levelized.
> 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.
"Human cognizance" and what it is cognizant about - the subject and
its objective environment is the SOM and if you insist on this the
ultimate ground be my guest. It's what so many professing to be
moqists also subscribe to, only now with MOQ the (human) subjective
theory about an inscrutable reality "out there"
Bo
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