Dear All, The following is a response to many posts concerning the perceived dilemma of what is or is not understood by the intellect. I have been fascinated by this 'platypus' since I joined this Discuss. I must repeat: I am no philosopher, not even an academic. The tredding of the 'high country' is arduous, lonely and sometimes very cold. If one can find the Buddha there, fine and that will be a satisfying experience. But I live in the valley,a Western valley with many other people and this is a better place for me to seek the Buddha.
The following may appear, at times, to be a bit of a ramble but I hope you'll be able to follow the thread and please bear with me. I have jumped in at an arbitrary point, just like one gets thrown into this world...an arbitrary point, where everything around you is in full swing and you spend half your life just catching up. Anyway, I hope to do justice to those I am responding to and if I do not, or have misunderstood you, please point this out to me. I hope we are all seekers and regard ourselves as such. We know the consequences of hiding/feeling comfortable in various camps which are not/ or only partly representative of what the Moq is trying to do...and this is to make this world a better place to live in...without camps, without divisions. All reality is one, only we, as thinking, conscious patterns of value, of necessity, rip it to bits and pieces because, to try to comprehend this fully is to go absolutely bananas. The handfull of sand from the beach... . Bodvar : Vol 36, Issue 10: > I doubt if the term (reason) is used other than in the said "reasoning" > context, not to speak of "....specifically equating reason with SOM", > but French has its "Raison" and German its "Vernunft" that has a more > objective ring to it than merely drawing conclusions. And that > SOM=objectivity you can hardly deny*). Andre: Reason as in: 'any excuse' as opposed to a method employed to argue a case ( saying: the more logically consistent, the more truthful the case).Hence SOM logic application. Horse to Platt: Same Issue, We?re at last dealing with morals on the basis of reason. We can now deduce codes based on evolution that analyze moral arguments with greater precision than before." (Chapter 13 Lila) Andre: SOM reasoning has no moral basis i.e it is not 'founded' on morality. The MoQ is founded on morality. Implying the MoQ is morality. I.e. not S vs O. not O vs S. Not S vs S, Not O vs O ( that is:not 'cause and effect systems'). All is one.All is an organic whole. Horse continues: I think the main problem I have with the idea that SOM and Reason are identical is that in order for this to be correct, then Bo's SOL would be correct and I just don't believe this is the case. And neither does Pirsig, so I'm in pretty good company. Andre: I agree. To reduce Reason to pure SOM is to reduce reasoning's capacity to SOM's confines.(conventional reason = SOM because of the myth of being informed by the objective world). The MoQ, in its ability to reflect upon itself (as static/dynamic intellectual pattern) exposes this postulate as myth. It is not so. Why? Because reason is mediated socially/organically/inorganically. The MoQ has recognised that its reflective capacity/ capability is made possible through its grounding in the social, i.e social mediation through its dependence and 'struggle with its parent levels ((in)organic patterns. Reason is made subjective and therefore provisional.Man is the measure...but with a healthy respect for and guidance by, its parent levels . Platt continues: "Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. Andre: Agree, Quality cannot be broken down. Any intellectual pattern attempting to understand/ comprehend Quality by reducing it to definitions/ words/concepts will detract from it and be led astray. Platt: > Another indication from Pirsig that SOM and Reason are not identical is > the following: > > "The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing > itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to > invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit. > Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world, > never from the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon > the mind with no social mediation whatsoever. It is easy to see the > historic reasons for this myth of independence. Science might never have > survived without it. But a close examination shows it isn?t so." > (Chapter 12 Lila) Andre: Correct, and to my understanding this was confirmed by Phaedrus through coming across Poincarre. Poincarre pointed towards the logical inconsistencies of SOM reasoning from within ( hereby questioning or rather challenging the modern definition of reason as merely being a method of establising a cause and effect/ deterministic relationship) and without.Pirsig has shown that our modern 'quality' of reasoning isn't correct. I has produced platypi, not because of the internal inconsistencies of Inorg.PoV's and organic PoV's but because of the inability of 'conventional' reason to account and 'logically' explain what was observed (and experienced) Platt continues: This to me confirms rather than contradicts that SOM and reason are identical. It's about the SOM intellectual level arising from the social level and being influenced by social patterns rather than a comment about the relationship of reason to SOM. Or so it seems to me. Andre: And this 'arising out of the social level' has always been fiercely guarded/guided and persecuted by the Church (as social level). Reason has never been allowed to develop into 'maturity' properly. In this sense, 'reason has had two blows: first at the hands (mind?) of Aristotle (dialectics) and secondly at the hands of the Church. But this does not mean, ipso facto, that 'Reason' is, in toto, exempt from being capable of mediating Quality and using this self same reasoning to ligitimately account for other expressions of Quality ( i.e. other than those obtained solely through reason). As Pirsig suggests, MoQ's Int. PoV's subsume and expand upon SOM and thereby conventional reasoning because it includes the recognition of Quality as being the flux and stuff of reality rather than S/O. IF there is a relationship between SOM and MoQ reasoning, and I am not suggesting there is but if I can recognise one it is a SOM reasoning which states: this causes this or has caused that and therefore.... FULL STOP! and MoQ reasoning states that: this analogue developed into another analogue and putting the two together I created this third analogue etc etc based on QUALITY...because I preferred this rather than that.( commonly referred to as a red thread through one's life...in hind sight). Platt continues: Point well taken. In that debate I'm on Bo's side. I think for the MOQ to be viable it must take a stance outside SOM which has to define its terms. Quality is beyond definition, yet we know it to be true. There's the rub. Andre: Yes, and Pirsig has used the logical consistencies and inconsistencies ( forced upon it by social mediation to which it had been aloof) of SOM reason(ing), plus the other , external proofs of these ( at least at the organic level by exposing the platypi) and thereby freeing the intellectual level from its own SOM straight jacket. Does this mean that the SOM=Intellect analogy still stands? Pirsig has stated quite clearly that the MoQ is a static Int. PoV. With the argument that SOM doesn't explain reality clearly, the MoQ does, because it redefines reality in a completely different way and by implication, has more explanatory power and states itself to be provisional based upon its own bases i.e. reality=quality=undefined. In this sense , the MoQ is the freest ( in Bateman's terms, has the most requisite variety) than any other metaphysical system. It is capable of explaining SPOV's, analysing the inconsistencies within our understanding of SPOV's and exposing the resultant tensions within and between each SPOV. It is dynamic, simply because it has recognised that 'reality' i.e. DQ. Therefore it is freer than anything else we have had before (in our thinking and our experience)[...or perhaps I should say it has given a ligitimate voice to our thinking and experiencing which has been part of our own patterns for millions of years].MoQ is also a guiding force because it recognises Quality as reality and not the confines of SOM as reality. MoQ points to the possibility of a moral force at work. Bo continues: Platt is spot on. The MOQ is "out of SOM" no one can deny that. It was SOM's paradoxes that vexed young P. so much that he - after flunking school and drifting laterally for many years - had his Quality Epiphany. And that he had to use SOM's reason to prove that SOM is incomplete is just as plain.. Andre: Absolutely agree, see my previous point. Pirsig is bright. He saw consistencies and inconsistencies and a whole lot of other things within the dominant, and not so dominant/ popular, intellectual frameworks and he put them together to arrive at a Quality understanding of reality. Bodvar: OK, I see your "reason" ;-) Fair enough, but the SOL must be employed for the MOQ to be consistent and have its proclaimed explanatory power. Andre: Not to offend anyone but who cares where he got it from? He may have drawn it out of his toes for all I care or sucked out of his thumb. Of course he didn't, he drew from many places and in the end he combined the whole lot into his heart (mysticism?), combined it with his feelings and produced ZMM and more formally, Lila, inductively and deductively respectively. All is one! Which method one uses depends on one's static patterns and upon the outcome one wants. One method maybe more useful to use than another. Sometimes we use the shape of the clouds,the direction of the wind, to tell us where to go. Sometimes the position of the stars or even the cosy feeling of our bed to not go there. SOM/MOQ. Can you compare the oxen-and cart with a Masarrati? Yet, without the former we would not have the latter (and I see the former everyday...can you imagine a Masarrati pulling the plow in these rice-paddy fields?) Bodvar in Issue No 16: I still wonder what relevance the "doctor vs germ" example has in the Reason=SOM debate (are there doctors who have qualms using antibiotics?) but it must have something to do with Andr?'s about MOQ as a "method of reasoning" as opposed to SOM's ditto. And I'll concentrate on this to (try to) make my point. Andre: Yes, Bodvar. In our 'enlightened' Holland some still do and this is due to religious convictions. In SOM thinking this is allowed. It talks about the right of the doctor to appeal to his/her ethical/moral objections and so not administer, and the right of the patient/parents who may appeal on the same grounds and not be administered to...(often making a decision on behalf of the child who subsequently dies)! However,not specifically referring to antibiotics but a very interesting 'moral' issue came up a few weeks ago in Parliament (and caused a stirr socially and intellectually). Medical science has developed a screening test whereby embryo's of persons carrying a deadly form of breastcancer is detected. To clarify, Mum knows she carries this disease, marries, gets pregnant and here comes the screen... . This germ kills...no doubt about it. Mum may live 'till 30 (if she is very lucky) maybe 35 but she will die young. Question is: should we kill the embryo, knowing we are certain that it carries this deadly germ? And by killing it at this stage destroy the possibility of 'infecting' another generation with it. Removing a continuing, moral dilemma. I think the MoQ reasoning leaves no doubt whose side it is on. Yet, through religiously inspired arguments (Holland has a many party political system) a watered down piece of legislation has been adopted leaving those concerned still up in the air about what is legally/ morally correct. May I also add that the mothers concerned wanted a: kill the embryo verdict ! They didn't get it. This is an indication of how politics gets into areas of personal/individual experience it has absolutely no right to meddle in.Such is Holland...sometimes. I am not done yet, but send this in just to be rid of it. In the mean time, if you feel so inclined do criticise but be gentle on me please...I am only developing this and not necessarily uncertain but not completely certain either. I would really like your input so I can understand this MoQ better. For what it is worth Andre 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/
