Krimel 17 Jan. you wrote::
> The connection is that you talk about the levels as though they were > entities. It is not at all difficult to avoid anthropomorphizing them > unless you understand them in such a way as to make it "next to > impossible". Your comments on emotions like your interpretations of > history are just wrong. Do you actually research any of this or is it > just stuff that falls heavy handed onto the keyboard of your computer. This issue I regard as closed. You know my position ;-). > Emotions are biological both in their origins and in the functions > that they serve. Our capacity for emotion is encoded in our biology. > We share this encoding not only with our own species but with other > mammals as well. The fact that people everywhere can rightly interpret > the emotions of another with whom they do not share common language or > culture speaks loudly to this point. We can even interpret the > emotional states of other mammals with whom we share almost nothing > and certainly not a "social" connection. This may be good latin in S/O-land where there's only body and mind, but in DQ/SQ-land where the S/O is degraded to a static level - and IMO a set of "expressions" corresponds to the respective levels - a different picture unfolds. Biology's is "sensation" An inorganic compound - say adrenalin that we once discussed - causes a certain sensation, but there's no EMOTION involved. An animal's wild eyes and rapid heart rate isn't fear, once the chase is over they are calm as ice. They would not survive becoming nervous wrecks, refuse to come out in the open ...etc. Here you are the one who anthroplologizes. > We do overlay our expression of emotion with social customs that > mediate the proper time to display our emotions and we have a wide > array of rituals for expressing them but the emotions themselves are > pure biology. In this respect social custom plays the same role as it > does in our purely biological practices for raising our young and > sharing food. Biology's sensation are lifted to higher value by the 3rd. level and comes out as "emotions". About the proper time to display them and such may be finer points of social intercourse, but emotions are the true social "cement". Love of family, duty to country devotion to "our cause" ...etc. The next expression is intellect's "reason" but let that wait. > This much of your position is crystal clear to me. You think the > "levels" are central. You think they offer great explanatory power. > And it should be clear to you that I think this is wrong. The levels > are clearly not discrete as Pirsig claims. I have yet to see even > common themes as to what the intellectual level is. Manipulation of > symbols. A particular point of view. The accumulation of knowledge and > custom. Who know? Who cares? I see the Dynamic and Static pair as interdependent, there's none without the other, while the static levels are what gives the MOQ its explanatory power. Otherwise we agree a lot. The level discreteness only goes so far, if examined deep enough they will begin to show traces of their parent. That's what Pirsig calls being "out of" the former. About intellect you are just right, I have tried to put things right with my SOL (intellect = SOM) and Pirsig agreed (in the PT letter) but then undid it with his "manipulation of symbols" definition. > What impressed me about ZMM when I read it way back in 1975 is that it > presented Taoism in the language of the west. You can see it here: ---- snip ------ I've read all of the following with enormous interest - even some agreement. Yes, the analytic knife (in ZAMM) split Reality the said Romantic/Classic way, or to be correct, the absolute first split was "pre-intellect/post-intellect" (where post was the S/O aggregate) Now, what the pre-anything reality is called - Tao or Quality or X - isn't important, the main thing is the right side of the equation and its "levels". Taotic "passive levels" would have been fine with me. And it's here the MOQ leaves everything in the dust - could have hadn't it been for the pesky 4th level where the MOQ itself exists as a static pattern. And the "orthodox" of this site keeps defending it. Phew!!. I quote this from your post. > In Lila he is merely picking a particular duality that he regards as > being more central and fundamental to existence than S/O. It meshes > neatly with the Taoism division of the world into active and passive. OK, if you say so, but I find the Dynamic/Static a notch better. > It meshes neatly with the physicist's division of the world into matter > and energy. They are opposite sides of the same coin. Protest! The energy/matter divide doesn't correspond to the the dynamic/static divide (nor the active/passive), it doesn't even correspond to the S/O. It poses no metaphysical problem, energy is as "objective" as a piece of stone in physics. > The very inability to define the Tao is validated in mathematics by > Gödel and in physics by Heisenberg. Uncertainty can not be driven from > experience even "in principle". I think this point is central to the > MoQ and indeed to the debate unfolding at present amongst Steve and > Matt and dmb. It underlies as well, the whole postmodern movement. You may know a bit more than myself about Gödels theorem, but I see it more like the inability to go outside ourselves - outside language - and obtain a God's Eye view. Regarding Quantum weirdness we may agree, IMO it's the inorganic level showing its dynamic base. As said, if the levels are examined deep enough will show the roots of the former level. The inorganic is the first or deepest and will show the dynamic ground it sprang from. And this was so interesting that I leave Kant for now. Bo 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/
