Hi Bo --
[Ham, previously]:
One of the problems here is that you are using "intellect" to represent what I call "experience". To me intellection is the process of organizing sensory data into a structured whole - experiential existence.
[Bo]:
You bet. Pirsig's statement that the level arrangement isn't new makes the impression that the first 3 correspond to the scientific disciplines. The two lower may pass, but the social level has little to do with "sociology" and 4th. even less with the usual usage of the term "intellect", namely thinking in general. Your "... intellection is the process of organizing sensory data ...etc." sounds like a more complicated variety of "thinking" and as long as this definition reigns the MOQ is not understood. Its 4th. level is crucial and is the S/O distinction ...
If the 4th level is "crucial", why not forego the levels (which only cause confusion) and consider "intellect" (I would call it "awareness" or cognizance) the differentiated agent created by the primary division? My cosmogeny posits Difference as the primary cause of experiential reality. (I'll leave its derivation from Essence alone for the moment.) Difference breaks the absolute source into two essential contingencies - sensibility and otherness. From this dichotomy comes value-sensibility and the identity of self-awareness with a specific (biological) body. Since Pirsig's levels are intellectually constructed by the individuated self, like all other concepts, I could care less about these labels. They are arbitrarily defined, add nothing to the cosmology, and set up unnecessary hurdles to understanding.
... and a host of subsidiaries (mind/matter, soul/body, mental/corporeal, abstract/concrete, culture/nature, thoughts/what thoughts are about, symbols/what they symbolize ...and more I don't recall at the moment.
[Ham]:
I won't quarrel with your assertion that Essence "belongs to the idealist camp" if you'll agree that Pirsig's Quality also falls into this camp.
[Bo]:
The idealist/materialist distinction is a mind/matter variant so this affirms that you are firmly lodged in intellect's subjective camp. However you are acquitted, worse are the alleged moqists who are likewise lodged but don't know it. Worst are some utterances by Pirsig f.ex. the one about the MOQ as an intellectual pattern (ignores that the 4th. level is a MOQ "pattern") and about Quality as the "essence" with the MOQ some theory about it (an even subtler S/O)
I don't follow this either, which goes to show that leveling and patterning are only similes (mental constructs) for describing differences (i.e., the differentiation of finitude into diversified entities).
[Ham]:
I don't understand what you mean by "intellect's premises". Are they mental constructs of cognizant awareness or patterns of an extracorporeal quality?......
[Bo]:
Intellect's premises is the conviction that existence is split along the subject/object "fault" ...or the mental/corporeal one, or any of the subsidiaries.
Right. So, you see, this "split" is the beginning of difference, without which there would be no experiential existence. The cosmogeny is really that simple!
The difference between intelligence and intellect is crucial. As said animals show different degrees of intelligence, but none (of them) has entered the intellectual level (society is the necessary step).
Why must intellect be associated with society? This is another of those weird Pirsigianisms. Can't we conceive thoughts and ideas on our own? Must an intellecutal thought be communicated to others in order to have validity? Must everything we think have to come from other people?
[Ham]:
You seem to be treating intellect as a property or function of the objective universe rather than the subjective individual. This [epistemology] is incomprehensible to me
[Bo]:
The subjective/objective split (and its offshoots) has no relevance outside the 4th. level, the MOQ only recognizes the dynamic/static split. I wish this was "Pirsigianism" but he is notoriously ambiguous. I know the alleged moqist strongly dislikes the SOL interpretation, but someone must create order out of the master's wildly divergent statements.
[Ham]:
By "a Q-development" do you mean that Quality acts as an external force to infuse or empower the individual with intellect?
[Bo]:
A "Q-development" is a static level and its sub-sets. No, Quality does not act as an external force, nor as an internal, internal/external is another intellectual offshoot. You may say that it leaves little and the MOQ is immensely general, the worst fallacy is Magnus' who thinks it is some better science. Its force is the immense explanatory power the level arrangement offers.
Sorry, Bo, but what you call "immense explanatory power" I see as a gigantic stumbling block. I fail to see what is so critical or metaphysically significant about levels, subsets, and patterns. To me this is deceptive use of scientific constructions which have meaning only in the context of objective reality. (Check out David Morey's reference to Deleuze and his theory of Difference preceding Identity. It's "fundamental" and may help you appreciate where I'm coming from.)
I'll wait for your next installment. Thanks, and regards, Ham 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/
