Hi Ham
Sat. March 22 you wrote:
> Even if "intellectual" is conceived to be the last (highest?) in a
> sequence of levels, there is no "role" for intellect other than the S/O
> role. Intellection is a faculty of cognitive awareness which is the
> individual's proprietary sense of being.
About intellect's role sounded too good to be true at first (you
know my SOL) and it soon dawned on me that yours is "intellect
in its SOM role" that of thinking (cognitive awareness) not in
MOQ's role as (in this case) the value of the "thoughts/what
thoughts are about" distinction. This confirms my assertion that
you don't understand the Q-level point because the Social level
humankind surely had an individual sense of being and were as
intelligent as ourselves.
> Intellect interprets experience objectively, as the relations of
> phenomena in a space/time universe.
This however looks more of the SOL intellect. So I'm not all sure,
maybe you are a "cupboard moqist" ;-)
[Bo before]:
> > Pirsig does not say that experience creates the world, rather that
> > Quality creates the world, its first creation the static inorganic
> > level, its last the intellectual ditto. Nothing about "us
> > valuating" or other "human consciousness creating the world".
> Pirsig says that experience is "the cutting edge of reality", which
> to me implies that the conscious observer delineates or configures
> the universe in terms of its perceived attributes. I mention this
> only because it would seem to support an ontogeny similar to my own.
> However, if I my interpretation of Pirsig's statement is wrong,
> I'll gladly withdraw it from the discussion
OK, Ham you have a point here, the said "cutting edge" passage
goes like this
He simply meant that at the cutting edge of time, before
an object can be distinguished, there must be a kind of
nonintellectual awareness, which he called awareness of
Quality. .
but references to ZAMM regarding the final MOQ is a "fine art",
because Phaedrus started from SOM's premises so there may
appear intellect=consciousness. I will not say that the above is
wrong but in a metaphysics that rejects consciousness as the
starting point, it's not right to speak of "awareness of quality". If
so we have an "Awareness Metaphysics" and if it is
dynamic/static-divided with static awareness levels it's a MOQ
variety. Can it be that your Essentialism is one such?
> Spare me the embrace, Bo ;-). I can understand why the Anthropic
> Principle seems radical in an age of objective materialism where
> it's assumed that reality is physical and the psychic nature of man
> is mythical.
Saying that we live in an objective materialist age - one hundred
years after Einstein's General Relativity and Quantum Physics -
is a bit too much. My assertion is that we live in an age of
"subjectivism" but this as much SOM as materialism.
> But in no way can I accept your view that gravity didn't exist before
> Newton, that the universe was not relative before Einstein, or that man
> was not intellectual before the Enlightenment.
Things have always fallen to the ground and the reason why has
had many explanations before Newton, so in that sense Newton
created gravity, that was P of ZAMM's point. And the same goes
for Relativity and Quantum Physics. Great theories changes our
reality and a metaphysics (as the greatest possible theory)
changes it fundamentally. At this point I thought we were on
common ground.
> Such historical literalism takes radicalism to new heights and makes
> Pirsig's tetra-level hierarchy even less credible.
The MOQ is "radical" in the sense of the Newton example, it's
turns the sock of reality inside-out
He remembered a metaphor that had occurred to him of a
bug that had been crawling around in some smelly sock
all his life and now someone or something had turned the
sock inside out. The terrain he covered, the details of his
life, were all the same, but now somehow everything
seemed open and free and all the horrible confining smell
of everything was gone (LILA).
... but after the turn it's not particularly radical, because SOM's
"man", and his "consciousness" or "mind" and all these
mysterious realms that either creates reality, or is the result of a
fine-tuned universal process, are gone.
> I admire your perspicacity, Bo, but I fear your ideas on the
> intellect will never be comprehensible until you acknowledge that it
> is man himself, not the universe, who does the intellectualizing.
Thanks for the perspicacity compliment (at first I thought it had to
do with my sweat) That the biological organism called "man" is
the sole inhabitant of the intellectual level we agree on, but your
"intellectualize" smacks of intelligence and I ask you as I have
asked before: Doesn't your dictionary indicate an OBJECTIVE
"intellect"? not merely a cognitive faculty?
Bo
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