Ahhh, now we are having a conversation gentlemen. Bravo and thank you. Ron said: ...here's the issue: Bo maintains by these statements that for all practical intent and purpose, SOM represents the intellectual level as per our culture.
dmb says: I'd say you've softened Bo's claim here but it's still not soft enough. Weird things happen when the 4th level is equated with SOM. I think it's important to construe intellect as larger and more open-ended than Bo's claim would allow. One of the weirdest things it does is make the MOQ impossible. It says that intellect MUST use the analytic knife in one particular way. The MOQ is the prime example. It cuts things up differently and thereby proves that intellect isn't so trapped. See, Bo's claims strike at the very heart of what the MOQ is and does. It's no accident that he has to disagree with Pirsig in order to maintain it. But if we soften it up, - way, way up - it only means that the dominant worldview is dominant. As SA said, "western culture isn't exclusively an s/o intellect. It may have become dominant, and the dominant does hold the microphone." Ron said: Now MoQ and SOM differ in the fact that SOM is embedded in the culture while MoQ is not, not yet anyway. Here lies the paradigm shift from speaking about the levels in general evolutionary terms and speaking of them in culturally specific terms. dmb says: This is on the boarder of weirdness. I don't think that the levels are relevant to a discussion of difference between SOM and the MOQ since they are both intellectual. They are rival sets of 4th level patterns. They express a very different worldview, but do so with the same tools and rules. Should the latter come to dominate the culture, yes, that would be a paradigm shift. That would be an historical, sociological event about which we can only speculate. Presently, all we can do is examine these metaphysical ideas, these rival philosophies. See, if the intellect is "exclusively" SOM, then we have to start talking about a fifth level or a new paradigm or an alternative culture in order to explain the very existence of the MOQ. But if we admit that SOM is only the dominant worldview the entire mess goes away. "Maybe when Phaedrus got this metaphysics all put together people would see that the value-centered reality it described wasn't just a wild thesis off into some new direction but was a connecting link to a part of themselves which had always been suppressed by cultural norms and which needed opening up. He hoped so. ...Phaedrus hoped this Quality metaphysics was something that would get past the immune system and show that American Indian mysticism is not something alien from American culture. It's a deep submerged hidden root of it. ...Americans don't have to go to the Orient to learn what this mysticism stuff is about. It's been right here in America all along." I'd add that this doesn't exclude our Aussie, English and Norwegian friends. Or anybody else. As I see it, this mysticism stuff is everywhere and the submerged hiddenness is just a matter of degree. All the great religions have clap-trap attached to it, in lesser and greater degrees, but they all have this root. That's essentially what the perennial philosophy says, that the root is everywhere and that's only because experience of the dynamic is everywhere. Ron said: I'm not an SOL salesman, I'm just trying to sort out the mess. I guess the main point is that SOM was not aware that it was an intellectual pattern and took it for reality itself the culture takes it as reality itself. MoQ realizes it is an intellectual pattern and includes this knowledge in it's body. It leaves the metaphysic open to the dynamic. dmb says: I wonder if an entire culture can have this kind of realization. I mean, this could be described in terms of a living myth, which is a myth that doesn't know its a myth. The dominant world view is not just the best intellectual description for most people. Its the way things really are. But this sort of view is usually held by those who don't seriously examine their assumptions or beliefs. Most people aren't philosophers. But the philosophers certainly do realize that SOM is not reality itself. Both of my professors and most of the authors assigned by them had something to say about SOM and the alternatives to it. It's very much part of the postmodernism critique. SA said: ...Intellectual patterns are the metaphysics, as well as, the other levels are the metaphysics and dq is the metaphysics, therefore, the moq can't be lived out only as intellectual patterns. dmb says: Yes, there is a paradox in the fact that the MOQ includes intellectual descriptions of an area beyond intellectual descriptions. This paradox is known to philosopher and has even been given a name. Its a very interesting thing, but its not a real problem. We need not employ magic to get around it. Basically, it only means that there is a difference between experience and concepts. The DQ/sq split handles this quite nicely. Ron said: This aspect alone sets it above all other intellectual patterns. Now before you go pointing to Tao and Hinduism, I must point out that MoQ retains scientific method and a host of other SOM qualities that have bore the fruit of our modern world. As far as I'm aware historically this is something of a first for humanity and the dawning of a new age of possibility. dmb says: I wouldn't put it in such grandiose terms nor do I think the MOQ is without company. Frankly, the phrase "dawning of a new age" makes me cringe. But I do think that putting value at the center is unique As far as I know that is a first. But the fusion of East and West has been a bit of a trend for generations. But more specifically... Yes, its true that science traditionally operates with the assumptions of SOM, but the scientific method is very much based on experience. It is essentially empirical. That's what makes it work and that's why a radical empiricist can be opposed to SOM without being anti-scientific. A radical empiricist can't exclude "sensory" experience any more than it can exclude mystical experience. This is the empiricism that makes an East-West fusion work, see? As Pirsig points out, scientific data does not change because of the MOQ. What changes is the way we think about that data. Science is just another area of experience where the MOQ cuts things up differently. It cuts things in such a way that science and mysticism can co-exist in harmony. Why do I feel like a coke right now? dmb _________________________________________________________________ Watch “Cause Effect,” a show about real people making a real difference. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=text_watchcause 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/
