Hi Bo --
I thought of suspending our discussion again, it leads nowhere, but then your "man the creator" resembles ZAMM's re. "man the measure" so if you will join me in a little discussion here? In the said book Pirsig presents the Quality interpretation of what took place in Greece during the known period. The cosmological "school" coming to a head with Socrates and that his pupil Plato and the later Aristotle represent the beginning of SOM. Against this Pirsig places the Sophists who represent the old Aretê that he identifies with his Quality. Now as SOM is the subject/object configuration, objectivism (in this case the Cosmologists) could not rise without subjectivism arriving in some form, and my thesis is that the said Sophist represented the subjectivism and your "man the creator" makes me wonder if you subscribe to subjectivism (idealism) Now, Pirsig insists that "man the measure" is different from "... man the source as the subjective idealists would say" (ZAMM page 368) But I have trouble seeing the distinction here. An idealist will assert that the "anything outside man" is man's creation too. Is this your position?
The classical idealism of Plato was founded on ideas, forms and values, as opposed to materialistic objectivism. By the middle of the 18th century, Kant, Husserl, and Hegel had developed a philosophy of "phenomenalism" to describe the world of "appearances". But existentialism in the last century put philosophy back on an objectivist foundation when Heidegger and Sarte decided that Kant's "thing-in-itself" was flawed, instead positing "being" as reality and insisting that "existence precedes essence". But, enough for Philosophy 101.
Since you like to categorize concepts, you can consider me a phenomenalist on existential matters, and an Essentialist when it comes to explaining experiential existence in terms of ultimate reality. Man is the measure of all things, and (yes) things are his creation. Whether this makes me an "idealist" or not, it is my position.
To you "intellect" is equal to intelligence, while it according to my dictionary (compressed) is the ability to distinguish between what's objective and what's subjective (exactly what MOQ's intellect is) Now, there was a time before the Greeks (the social age) that used their intelligence but this "philosophing" was from the premises of a God-run reality (many in the mythologies or the one in religions) so intelligence in the "comparing, extrapolate and conceptualize" sense has a lot to do with ancient times (social level) but REASON (the S/O distinction) only arrived with the intellectual level.
My (uncompressed) Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines "intellect" as: "1a: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will; the capacity for knowledge; b: the capacity for rational or intelligent thought, esp. when highly developed. 2: a person with great intellectual powers." Note that this definition says nothing about "distinguishing what's objective and what's subjective", and that intellect is a "power" or "capability" (of man) rather than a realm or levcl of the universe. As this is the common understanding of the term, you'll have to excuse me if I have difficulty comprehending the capacity for knowledge as something distinct from human cognizance. If intellection is the reasoning function of the individual, perhaps Knowledge or Truth is what Pirsig should have placed at the fourth level. (?)
I had asked:
What is this mystical "leading edge" of intellect that so intrigues you?
[You replied]:
The static evolution began with the inorganic level this must have been "leading edge" for aeons before the biological level arrived. This goes all the way up to the intellectual level (which isn't thinking in general but the said S/O) and if this arrived with the Greeks it's been "leading edge" for millenniums before the MOQ arrived. Intellect knew nothing about being a level (it was like you Ham, assuming itself to be the way things really are) not until the MOQ was the Q-context revealed.
I didn't know you were a comedian, Bo. Intellect "...was like you, Ham, assuming itself to be the way things really are." (Thank goodness I don't assume things to be what they really are NOT, like some folks I know!) But why do you constantly subject me to all this evolutionary history? "Before the biological level ARRIVED"? Does this mean that biology played no part in the universe before man, or that it "arrived" in time to produce cellular life forms? Your cosmogeny would appear be following a timetable for the arrival of levels.
Think of the joy of the old mathematicians, geometricians, thinkers arriving at these TRUTHS, your Archimedes, Pythagoras. Euclid, Ptolemaios, the lot. They surely were pioneers (leading edge). However the MOQ meaning of "leading edge" is as said up above.
Now, it's MAN who is "arriving at Truths", instead of Truth arriving at man. But you said (above) that the Intellectual Level "arrived with the Greeks"! Which is it, Bo? These spontaneous arrivals and departures will surely cause me to miss the train.
[Ham, previously]:
Are you saying that all the principles, equations, laws, and hypotheses that Man has constructed to define the natural world exist eternally at some extracorporal level? That they are not part of man's reasoning process?
[Bo]:
The question if principles, equations, laws ..etc. exist independently of man is not part of MOQ's repertoire, but is the very soul of the intellectual level's objective-over-subjective camp. The subjective- over-objective camp claims that everything including laws are "perception forms" (ref. Immanuel Kant)
If it's not part of MoQ's repertoire, how did it get to be yours? I agree that the laws and principles of nature are intellectually derived precepts of experience. However, that doesn't make them "dominant" to either subjectivity or objectivity. Laws and principles are simply the way we make sense of the relational world we all experience. The "truths" they suggest are relative to the cognizant individual who is a 'being-aware'. If we were a "thinking skyscraper" instead of a human being, we would have an entirely different perspective of physical reality, as well as the "truths" that apply to it.
Your initial feeling that this may be a hopeless discussion is proving correct, Bo. So far you've failed to enlighten me on the Bodvar repertoire of Intellect. I take it from the above that you do not regard intellect as a propietary human function, as does the rest of us, but a collection of precepts that arrive according to a universal schedule and awaken man to his subjectivity. I'm sorry, but there is little that I can relate to in such a twisted scenario. It lacks cosmological meaning or purpose, does not seem to recognize value, and -- worst of all -- dismisses the cognizant individual who is the locus and free agent of experience.
I appreciate your efforts to explain the SOL to me, and apologize for my "density". I'll leave it to you to decide whether there is any point in continuing this dialogue.
Thanks, Bo. --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/
