Hi Arlo
On 14 April:
You go on about "self", "collective vs individual" and some more
stuff that I don't have an inkling about - must be some "bone"
you have going with Platt. I cut that out and go directly to the
Descartes issue and point to what leads up to the said argument
in LILA.
The defenders who fought to protect science from church
control argued that science is not concerned with morals.
Intellectuals would leave morals for the church to decide.
But what the larger intellectual structure of the
Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that this political
battle of science to free itself from domination by social
moral codes was in fact a moral battle! It was the battle
of a higher, intellectual level of evolution to keep itself
from being devoured by a lower, social level of evolution.
We see that Pirsig sees the MOQ as a "larger intellectual
structure" which is the source of all trouble by violating the
container logic. The 4th. level is part of the MOQ thus the MOQ
can't be "an intellectual structure" however large.
Anyway, this fallacy of an intellect that can be revised by the
MOQ requires a scapegoat and he picks out "science" as the
SOM representative that fought its way out of social dominance,
but for chrissake it was INTELLECT that was behind this MORAL
movement.
Once this political battle is resolved, the Metaphysics of
Quality can then go back and re-ask the question, "Just
exactly how independent is science, in fact, from
society?" The answer it gives is, "not at all." A science in
which social patterns are of no account is as unreal and
absurd as a society in which biological patterns are of no
account. It's an impossibility. If society enters nowhere
into the business of scientific discovery then where does
a scientific hypothesis come from?
Yes, it's from the MOQ that the level context is seen, for instance
that the upper is as out of the lower and thus not totally
independent, but the faulty first step (that of the MOQ an
intellectual pattern) makes it adamant to force the STATIC
intellectual level into quasi dq/sq role it doesn't have the
qualifications for.
If the observer is totally objective and records only what
he observes, then where does he observe a hypothesis?
Atoms don't carry hypotheses about themselves around
as part of their luggage. As long as you assume an
exclusive subject-object, mind-matter science, that whole
question is an inescapable intellectual black hole.
Still correct seen from the MOQ,, but intellect would be totally
unfit if social value is to override its own value. But - alas - as
Pirsig sees it intellect has no value, its a empty "idea container"
that can contain SOM one day and MOQ the next.
Our scientific description of nature is always culturally
derived. Nature tells us only what our culture predisposes
us to hear. The selection of which inorganic patterns to
observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of
social patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of
biological patterns of value.
Correct to the last comma, but intellectual value is the result of
DQ's drift to - in this case - escape social value so why this
persecution of intellect (by its proxy science)? Well, I know only
too well, it's the fallacy of making the MOQ an intellectual
pattern.
Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was a historically
shattering declaration of independence of the intellectual
level of evolution from the social level of evolution, but
would he have said it if he had been a seventeenth
century Chinese philosopher? If he had been, would
anyone in seventeenth century China have listened to
him and called him a brilliant thinker and recorded his
name in history? If Descartes had said, "The seventeenth
century French culture exists, therefore I think, therefore I
am," he would have been correct.
Finally the Descartes passage and now we see it as part of
Pirsig's crusade against "science" as the SOM agent that have
infected an "innocent" intellect. In the true MOQ (where intellect
is a static level) seventeenth century France was a place where
the social level had reached the necessary sophistication for
intellect (that had lurked around since the Greeks) to re-emerge
from its Medieval hibernation. Not that Descartes merely
reiterating social mores.
The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship
between intellect and society, subject and object, mind
and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system
of understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological
values; subjects are social and intellectual values. They
are not two mysterious universes that go floating around
in some subject-object dream that allows them no real
contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact
evolutionary relationship. That evolutionary relationship
is also a moral one.
Yes, the MOQ certainly resolves things, but NOT by the said
method of "encasing" SOM. Only the SOL works.
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/
