Bo --
> Ham
> The last few days of this discussion have helped me understand what
> all is about so I open a new thread.
I'm glad the discussion has been productive for you.
> Me earlier:
> > However, I believe that the definition of the term "intellect" is
> > what all is about....
[Ham]:
> 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.
[Bo]:
> Do you mean I have formulated MOQ's real cause clearer than Pirsig
> or ....?
I mean you have dug yourself into the hole that Pirsig carefully avoided;
namely, positing Intellect as an ideation source that transcends the
individual.
[Ham previously]:
> 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.
[Bo]:
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.
Here is the ZAMM passage that you quoted in your SOM essay in connection
with the dilemma:
"And finally: Phaedrus following a path that to his knowledge had never
been taken in the history of Western thought, went straight between the
horns of the subjectivity-objectivity dilemma and said that Quality is
neither a part of mind, nor is it part of matter. It is a THIRD entity which
is independent of the two."
The SO dichotomy may be paradoxical, bit it's a dilemma only for those who
insist on an existential reality. Quality is not alone in being exclusively
neither mind nor matter; this is also true of Freedom, Excellence, Beauty,
Love, Balance, Goodness, Integrity, Harmony, Symmetry, Magnificence, and
dozens of other attributions, even Consciousness itself. Must we regard
them all as Quality?
As your new header implies, the point is that existence is a differentiated
"all". Everything in it is a being-made-aware--an object perceived
subjectively. In other words, Existence = SOM. All is about the relation
between individuated sensibility and differentiated otherness. The MOQers
want to make Existence their reality by pretending that there are no
differences--that everything is a category, level, or pattern of something
arbitrarily labeled Quality. But differences do not go away, subject and
object do not merge in experience, space and duration do not vanish from the
universe, my awareness and values do not become your awareness and values.
Existence [ALL] is about actualized relations. Essence [ONE] is about
absolute reality.
Evidently SO relations are needed to perfect the Source. But because the
MOQers do not acknowledge the Source, they claim to make a monism of SO by
denying its duality.
[Ham]:
> And intellect is the reasoning process of the
> human mind.
[Bo]:
> 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
[Previously]:
> 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".
[Ham]:
> 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.
[Bo]:
> 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.
Whatever the Stone Agers conceptualized was as "intellectual" as anything we
conceptualize today. To say they were not intellectuals is a subjective
judgment based on when you think "intellectuality" came on the scene. How
do you know there were no skeptics in the Stone Age? There was no language
by which to communicate skepticism. Also, what do you mean by "these
weren't theories about reality, rather reality itself"? And Muslims are
"latter day social-level people"?? What on earth does that mean?
[Ham]:
> 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.
[Bo]:
> What I warn against codifying is to confuse intellect and intelligence.
Good. So do I.
> 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.
My understanding is that the "higher" levels are more advanced, and thus
superior, to the lower ones. Isn't the intellectual level supposed to be of
"higher quality" than the inorganic and biological levels? Isn't the idea
one of moving toward "betterness" by evolving from the lower to the higher
levels?
> "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"
Physical experience is produced by two mutually exclusive but co-dependent
contingencies: proprietary sensibility and essential beingness. It is a
differential, relational system which many mistake for ultimate reality.
I'm still not clear on what you are insisting. What I insist on is a
primary source for diversity and difference, and that logically cannot be
existence. I also insist that it is the Value of the source from which we
create our relational world.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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