Hello everyone > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:29:43 +0100 > Subject: Re: [MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy. > > Ron > > 26 Feb.: > >> Don't forget me Bo! I disagree with your SOL too!! I believe Arlo, >> Krimel and Marsha have made arguements against it also. Must be nice >> to have selective memory. >[Bo] > Sorry Ron, but you have degenerated to just saying "I disagree" > without any argument, and argument isn't just praising DMB. As > said most of LILA underpins the SOL and in the Paul Turner letter > Pirsig comes as close as was possible to affirming it. > > I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," when > one extends it much before the Ancient Greeks > > "the same" is the absurdity of seeing social value in baboons and > chimps just because the rear their young and live in tribes. And > "Ancient Greeks" spells SOM in a MOQ context. Ipso facto. > Intellect = SOM
Dan: Hi Bo, I know you've got your hands full but I have few questions for you when you find the time... I've read and re-read Robert Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner but fail to see how it supports your SOL, Bo. In an effort to see just what it is you're getting at, I've copied and pasted the paragraph you cite: Robert Pirsig to Paul Turner: There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of "social" down into the biological with the assertion that, for example, ants are social, but I have argued that this extends the meaning to a point where it is useless for classification. I said that even atoms can be called societies of electrons and protons. And since everything is thus social, why even have the word? I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," when one extends it much before the Ancient Greeks.* If one extends the term intellectual to include primitive cultures just because they are thinking about things, why stop there? How about chimpanzees? Don't they think? How about earthworms? Don't they make conscious decisions? How about bacteria responding to light and darkness? How about chemicals responding to light and darkness? Our intellectual level is broadening to a point where it is losing all its meaning. You have to cut it off somewhere, and it seems to me the greatest meaning can be given to the intellectual level if it is confined to the skilled manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular experience and which behave according to rules of their own. Dan comments: Mr Pirsig has clearly stated that he feels the best definition of the intellectual level has to do with "the skilled manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular experience and which behave according to rules of their own." Could you please explain as simply as possible how this equates to intellect = SOM? > [Bo] > In LILA: > > Phædrus remembered now that it had bothered him a little > that in the Odyssey Homer seemed at times to be equating > Quality and celebrity. Perhaps in Homer's time, when > evolution had not yet transcended the social level into the > intellectual, the two were the same. > > > "Homer's time" is the Aretê era before SOM, and according to the > above the social level ruled meaning that the emerging SOM was > the emerging intellectual level. Get it? Dan: The levels don't actually exist. They're metaphysical tools that point towards an ordering of reality, not reality itself. That said, I know Mr Pirsig equates the intellectual level's emergence with the ancient Greeks but it seems a stretch to equate subject/object metaphysics with the intellectual level merely on that basis. SOM is a collection of intellectual patterns of value, yes, but not the intellectual level itself. > [Bo] > DMB is a featherweight thinker, Paul Turner was a real slugger, > but after years of debate the last argument made him write the > said letter and after that he disappeared. He at least knew when it > was time "to fold 'em". Dan: Did Paul Turner agree with your SOL? If memory serves, he did not. Please correct me if I am mistaken. Respectfully yours, Dan _________________________________________________________________ Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=TXT_MSGTX_WL_HM_express_032009#colortheme 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/
