DMB and group. On 24 Dec. you wrote:
> Bo asked how: n the > ...democracy and trial by jury emanated from "manipulation of symbols" > but that was in vain, maybe you DMB can inform us? ...I don't know > what "your" intellect is, but if it is the "symbol manipulation" one, > how can social value see this as a threat, and intellect in return > look upon social value as evil, and - moreover - spawn the > intellectual patterns that Pirsig refers to [democracy, trial by jury, > freedom of speech, freedom of the press] all of which are based on > the "objective over subjective" template. > dmb says: > Huh? I don't understand the question or what the problem is. The > intellectual values named here are aimed at protecting the intellect > from social level interference. About intellect's purpose that of preventing "social value interference" is OK. > Principles such as free speech and equal protection under the law are > designed to protect intellectual activity or "symbol manipulation". > These principles were derived using that same capacity. So what's the > problem? You turn things upside down. If we "define" the levels' in the negative sense (which is much better!) as that of defying the lower level, then the rebel will start spawning patterns that are anti-parent-levelish. Thus intellect's first ant-social break-out was the Greek thinker's eternal principles that implied a reality over/beyond the gods' reality. NB! A reality beyond was in its time social value's means to break loose from the biological prison. The first sign of civilization is burial rituals. i.e. the notion of a world beyond biological life. Thus free speech, an independent judicial system, trial by jury are modern intellectual patterns, they surely protect intellect-steeped- culture from interference from social-steeped ones, but the problem is how "symbol manipulation" as as the BASIC value could spawn the said patterns? > Social level values don't see symbols or their manipulation per se as > a threat but rather SOME the products, the beliefs and positions > arrived at by that means. In the case of Pirsig's diagnosis, the > "threat" comes more specifically from the dominant metaphysical > assumptions of the intellectual level, namely SOM. I admire your will to avoid the SOL, but it's plain that SOM is the intellectual level and that social value sees its objective-over- subjective attitude as the gravest threat. If "God'becomes an anthropological study it can destroy his role as realiy itself. > And I'd also object to the idea that these intellectual principles are > based on the "objective over subjective" template. There's nothing > inherently social about subjectivity. Course not, but you must understand that when intellect arrived on the scene - blind as all levels are to their level nature - it saw itself as "TRUTH versus the former myth reality " which it deemed "mere opinion" ... with the S/O variety it became "subjective". > Just like "objectivity", it is an intellectual distinction, a > particular idea about the nature of truth. Exactly. Only with the advent of the MOQ the level context is revealed and in it the 3rd. isn't subjective, it's from before intellect's S/O distinction. > Are you thinking that subjectivity belongs to the third level and > objectivity belongs to the intellectual level? If so, that would > explain why I can't follow your theories. No, as shown we agree here. It's the 4th. level's definition we disagree about. > My view is that SOM is a philosophical creature. Its been around long > enough that it has become common sense and in that sense it has been > absorbed as the standard world view among educated Westerners, It is but then the 4th. level can be called "philosophy" because the S/O is hidden below its premises of finding out existence's true composition. This about it having become common sense I agree about. Intellect colours our educated mode of the thinking ... thank goodness. > but in terms of the philosophical positions that follow from it there > is a whole range of positions from total subjectivity as in the > idealists and total objectivity as in the scientific materialists. Total agreement. > But there are also a wide range of philosophers who attack SOM as such > and assert that truth or reality is neither subjective nor objective. > As you know by now, James and Dewey were doing this 100 years ago. Attack SOM! Sure, the S/O distinction isn't "as it really is" (the DQ/SQ is) and ever since the intellectual level arose the see-saw has been going. The Sophists the first subjectivists. I am fully aware of James and Dewey, but only Pirsig brought this insight to become a new metaphysics. > You'll find different versions of this attack among the so-called > postmodern thinkers too. I've been pleasantly surprised to find that > Pirsig has a lot of company in the academic world on this point. After > being exposed to a bit of this, I think I can see how some are closer > to the MOQ than are others. I mention this range of MOQish, anti-SOM > philosophies because your take doesn't seem to fit into it anywhere and > I think it should. I mean, why is it I can see Pirsig in Nietzsche, > James, Dewey, Mead, Heidegger and so many others, but not in what > you're saying? Dear David, why was it that Phaedrus said that he had scanned all previous philosophy and not found anything like his ideas. He uses James and Poincare as examples of their path ending where his begins. In ZAMM it says something like ".. and then Phaedrus took a route that to his knowledge never had been taken before in the history of Western philosophy". > I mean, the MOQ's rejection of SOM is consistent with > the concerns expressed by a whole bunch of other philosophers and they > can all be read as members of a school or a style of thinkers. Despite > the differences, there's a sympatico that can be discerned. I suspect > that some of your positions would dissolve if you were exposed to this > school. It was something I thought I already understood. Its not that > I had to reverse myself in any way, but it was a pretty radical change > in terms of my level of appreciation of the problem. I suspect it would > be something like that for you too. I can't stress the importance of > radical empiricism enough on this point. It is not only an alternative > to SOM, it is what makes the pragmatism work and it is extremely > congenial to Quality, the mystical reality so central to the MOQ. The moment people become addicted to academical pursuits the MOQ becomes (in their views) just something like this or that previous philosophers. And the true MOQ becomes equally inedible. Poor Phaedrus. > "Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of > reality metaphysics is too `scientific´. Metaphysics is not reality. > Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where > they give you a thirty-thousand page menu and no food" (LILA 63). OK, after first having shown that metaphysics is the most basic ordering of existence - meaning that the Native American Indians', the Inuits', the Aborigines' realities are metaphysics (and they surely don't regard this as a "menu") he goes over to the Aristotelian arch-SOM notion of metaphysics a mere subjective theory ABOUT an objective reality. > "Mystics will tell you that once you´ve opened the door to > metaphysics you can say good-bye to any genuine understanding of > reality. Thought is not a path to reality. It sets obstacles in that > path because when you try to use thought to approach something that > is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you toward that > something. It carries you away from it. To define something is to > subordinate it to a tangle of intellectual relationships. And when > you do that you destroy real understanding. Well, isn't mysticism a "metaphysics" don't they use "thought" to arrive at these conclusions? > The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had > called `Quality´ in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess > piece. Quality doesn´t have to be defined. You understand it > without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct > experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions" > (LILA 64). That DQ isn't definable we all agree on, but the SQ - the levels - can and must be defined. OK Thanks Dave, it's a pleasure, you and I at least have SOME common ground. IMO Bo 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/
