Christoffer said: I myself tend to discard the symbol manipulation explanation because of the - as I see it - quite obvious reason that this is not in conflict with anything. The MOQ is a moral order, as we all know, and the different levels have more or less competing "views" on Quality and how to follow it. Thus I am inclined to thing along the paths of "What is not by it's _fundamental nature_ in service of either the inorganic, the biological or the social level?" ...As I said - manipulation of symbols doesn't really cut it for me - where is the FUNDAMENTAL conflict? ...Knowledge for knowledge's sake. I am not sure that it *is* the Intellectual level, but it sure seems to be a most notable manifestation of it. ..Knowledge for Knowledge's sake. Alone.
dmb says: The conflict between the social and intellectual values isn't immediately obvious if we think of the fourth level as simply the capacity to manipulate symbols. Seems to me that the rules of logic and grammar and the way these forms govern the quality of a thing called truth. In the MOQ, truth is not THEE Truth with a capital "T". It is simply a certain kind of good, a certain kind of excellence. True things are intellectually beautiful things, if you will. In this sense, clarity, precision, simplicity and coherence are among the aesthetic qualities we expect at that level. In other words, the symbols so manipulated have to add up. They have to work. And there is a moral dimension pervading this process that is not apparent when we say something like, "two plus two equals four". The conflict comes when the conclusions drawn and the predictions are made. Sometimes this process produces questions about and criticisms of social level values. Intellectual analysis of the social situation raises questions about the legitimacy and rationality of the divine right of kings, the legality and morality of wars of aggression, the truthfulness of religious claims and all sorts of things. We see this conflict in the news every single day. Did you catch Platt's post the other day, the one where he quotes from the Washington Times, re-asserting the old Victorian attitudes about war and patriotism? That's a pretty typical example of the social/intellectual conflict in the daily news. Both sides are manipulating symbols to defend their values but we have to look at the quality of that defense and the value of what's being defended. As Pirsig points out, it can be confusing because intellectual skills can be used to defend anti-intellectual values and intellectual values are sometimes defended with great sentiment and passion. They're not always in conflict, of course. If social level patterns are aimed at preserving society and intellectual patterns are aimed at preserving truths, then they don't have opposed goals so much as different goals. But sometimes intellectual truth does expose social level morality for what it is and war is a great example. The giant doesn't mind grinding up a few bodies to preserve itself and we still hear all sorts of quasi-religious glorifications of war and warriors from the more patriotic types. As we see so clearly in the case of the war in Iraq, the truth has nothing to do with it. _________________________________________________________________ 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/
