Krimel said to Squonk: ...As I said before it is so fraught with confusion and error as to be painful to read but part of the fascination of reading, rather like gawking at a train wreck, was wondering how long it would take the seemingly reasonable Squonk to melt down into the flaming crazy we all know and love. ..Only Squonk could start a thread in which I actually find myself agreeing at any level with dmb about something as ridiculous as Wilber's pre-trans fallacy and Ham on the proprietary self. Nice work.
dmb says: Except for the part about the fallacy, I agree with Krimel. That's how bad it is. Pretty soon cats and dogs will be living together, etc. Krimel continued: ...And I am "showboating" by actually looking at what happens to your experimental subjects? Interjecting facts into speculation does tend to have a dampening effect on absurdity, rather the way that the Logos compensates for the nonsense that so frequently emerges from the Mythos. dmb says: Right. Apparently, Squonk feels stifled by the facts and reason cramps his "artistic" style. Introducing either into the discussion is seen as oppressive. This naturally raises a key question; why does Krimel hate freedom so much? Just kidding. Yes, absurd is the word for it. Krimel continued: Thanks for the new wrinkle on why Pirsig's take on evolution is so corrosive. As though we could discern what "betterness" will be in the future and push towards it... ..."Betterness" is not even a word much less the goal of or necessary result of evolution at any level. Evolution is always driving toward stasis, balance, harmony, the path of least resistance. Calling it "betterness" doesn't really put a smiley face on heat death in my view. dmb says: I wouldn't defend Squonk's experiment or his take on the MOQ but I'd say your understanding of "betterness" could be better. On the first point, I don't think Pirsig makes any claims about discerning "betterness" in the future. It is simply a sense of rightness and wrongness in the present experience. The spur of the moment decisions made by each creature are based on the immediate situation but these choices add up to evolution. I mean, the future of the species or of the culture is never decided or discerned by any particular creature. And for the same reason, we can't rightly say evolution has a goal. I wouldn't agree with claim either, which would be a misinterpretation of Pirsig's "betterness". To use your words, stasis, balance, harmony are better than instability, imbalance and discord. To say that evolution is always driving toward these things is to agree with the essence of Pirsig's meaning. If we took semantics and bad interpretations out of the picture, I sincerely wonder if you'd be left with anything to complain about. Thanks. P.S. It just occurred to me that the term "preposterous" and the pre-trans fallacy are connected in a way. The roots "pre" and "post" are almost the same as "pre" and "trans". In both cases there is a simple before/after distinction. I like to think of "preposterous" in terms of the "posterior" being confused with the front of things. You know, its Latin for "assface" or "butthead". If one wished to be accurate in characterizing a person's argument, you'd have to throw it at somebody who has misunderstood things in such a way that they are somehow backwards or inverted, like a "pre" and a "post". And that's all Wilber's fallacy refers to. An argument that confuses one end of things with another. In what sense is it "ridiculous" to claim that such arguments exist, especially since you've been following Squonk's argument? Isn't the babies as mystics line a fine example of such confusion? Its one of the starkest, cleanest examples I've ever come across and you think its ridiculous? Well, I think "ridiculous" is a completely ridiculous word for it. The correct word in this case would be "classic". _________________________________________________________________ The i’m Talkaton. Can 30-days of conversation change the world? http://www.imtalkathon.com/?source=EML_WLH_Talkathon_ChangeWorld 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/
