Steve to Andre: I didn't agree or disgree but I don't know what it means. Andre: What I mean Steve is that many philosophies have created their own versions of 'reality' in the sense that, with their assumptions and propositions, a reality is created which is often very difficult to understand or to verify. Pirsig, in ZMM says much the same...and because most are very persuasive, once you accept one premiss you must accept the next one etc. etc. Their statements of the 'good' or ways to attaining the good is mostly based on a theoretical component ( e.g. Absolute Mind, Materialism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Behaviourism, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Socialism, This-ism, That-ism, Communism,dialectical materialism,Pragmatism, Empiricism, and, let's give Ham some due: Essentialism, proprioceptive valuing agent). In this sense they can be seen as delivering the 'ought' i.e. if and when you follow me you will attain the 'good'.... but with Reality as Quality it has very little in common.
Hope this is clear? Steve: Language is obviously part of reality. Andre: Glad you agree. Steve: New language patterns can dynamically evolve and old ones can be undermined by new ones. Andre: How does this occur? Do they evolve from nothing? Steve: Language is not generally to be taken as a representation of reality, though it sometimes is used in that way. Andre: C'mon Steve. Language is an active participant in the making or breaking of the static representations of reality (Quality). They are indeed based on biological grunts and growls ( you should hear the Chinese! By the way, there is a Chinese saying [no offence intended Marsha] : Two women talking sounds like 10.000 ducks), and have evolved as social patterns of value and are presently used as the plaything of intellect. ( see your Pirsig quote about intellect's purpose) The issue I am playing around with at the moment is that this discovery of 'an ultimate meaning of the universe' is a typical SOM activity more often than not ending up in dead end streets where 30.000 menues hang containing 30.000 words and no food. (Paradise, that way, paradise that way... Paradise that way...etc.) This is the breakthrough the Quality perspective provides. There is no 'ultimate meaning' and the world is composed of nothing but morality, including language. SOM has never been able to grasp this and has had to twist and bend and invent new language to make sense of the world. And the more complicated and sophisicated the language had become the more it had moved away from Quality. Steve: So as you should see, the origin of intellect is not subject-object metaphysics as Bo argues since intellect predates metaphysics and philosophy in general and all atempts to "discover an ultimate meaning of the universe." Andre: I agree with Bodvar on this one and, with Pirsig suggest that the scientific understanding of reality was born with Aristotle. Of course there were thinkers and scientists before Aristotle. This is not the issue. It wasn't until Plato and subsequently Aristotle that all these diverse intellectualisations became modified and integrated into a coherent and unified intellectual system. The problem remained to make this knowledge available to those who did not have the capacity and the logical training to grasp the definitions of the technical terms and to follow the logical course of the argument. And here Plato and subsequently Aristotle 'provided the answer, with their aesthetic theory of the analogical relation between the sensuous, emotional, aesthetic data which every mortal immediately experiences and the technical, logical, rational principles analogous to them, or embodied in them'. (Northrop, p 287). And here is where all the previous intellectualisations became unified into a coherent, logical, rational system. It was this system of thought that emerged from the social level, otherwise known as MoQ's intellectual level. Bodvar bases his SOL upon the argument that with this emergence a clear division was established between what is objectively true and subjectively mere opinion. The S/O division. The way to find out the difference was by applying the rational, dialectical, scientific method. A method which destroyed (social PoV's Quality,Arete) and which is still employed today. Cheers 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/
