All [ Pirsig] > "The whole purpose of scientific method is to make valid > distinctions between the false and the true in nature, to > eliminate subjective, unreal, imaginary elements from one's > work so as to obtain an objective, true picture of reality." (236) > [Bo's] > SOM does have its origin in the great cultural upheaval in Greece, but > as we have agreed on, it did not start outrightly with neither > mind/matter nor subject/object, but with the search for principles > beyond the mythological gods. > > I'm not sure if Matt objects to the Greeks "... created the divisions, or > whether they were created by somebody else" but for the umpteenth > time it's plain that they laid down the foundations and that SOM > evolved through fits and starts to ever new versions, the mind/matter > stage only emerging with Descartes.
> Another Eureka! See. even Matt recognizes that the intellectual LEVEL > (of the later MOQ) starts with the subject/object differentiation. [Dave] What makes so little sense to me is Pirsig starts with Indians and their plain talking, here and now, value based, "good dog" ways of being. He expands on that suggesting these Indian ways have similarities to Oriental being particularly Zen. All the while criticizing the shortcoming of the Western (SOM) approach to knowledge. Then at the end of the day when developing the MoQ that he would place the very approach he criticizes, SOM science, as the sole source intellectual knowledge just doesn't make sense. I think we have two problems here. One Pirsig either misspoke or miss thought about the nature of intellect/intellectual when he suggested the intellectual level did not emerge in human societies until the Greeks. Second is Bo's virulent misinterpretation of Pirsig's mistake, compounded with a maniac fear of words like mind, consciousness, intellect, subjective. So let's return to the Indians, not the Northern Cheyenne who RMP does drugs with, but their "cowardly" neighbors to the West, the Crows or Absaroka who I grew up among. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Nation. [ Somewhat long aside] To understand "cowardly" you have to understand that the Cheyenne and the Crow had been life long enemies who's nomadic ranges overlapped in Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota. Crows mostly on the western side, Cheyenne more on the eastern side sandwiched between the Sioux farther east and the Crows. Crow are from Sioux decent but the Cheyenne are Cree who moved up from further south. Cheyenne in Sioux meaning [people of an] alien speech" (literally, "red-talker"). After the Civil War as the waves of Western expansion continued and all the Plains Indians tribes are becoming more and more overrun and abused, the last of the "Indian Wars" starts. It starts with the most abused Eastern tribes and moves West. As it moves West the Sioux and the Cheyenne form alliances to fight the US Army. The Crow partly by the luck of geography (at the time primarily ranging in the rough high mountains from Yellowstone Park on the West, Yellowstone River on the North, the Bighorn rivers on the East and the slim picking of Wyoming "Desert" to the South) saw very few whites passing through their range and those that did were mountain men and traders who traded "good" things like guns, knives, cloth, etc. for furs. So just prior to the beginning of the end of the "Indian Problem" the Crows, partly figuring an enemy (the US Army) of my enemy (Cheyenne) are friends, aligned themselves with the Army helping them as guides in the campaigns during 1874-5-6. Fortunately and unfortunately they led Custer to his demise at Little Big Horn. Fortunately because in the end when they too were put on a reservation as a reward for their help they got one of largest areas covering most all of where they ranged before. The unfortunate part was they were, and to some extent still are, looked down on by all of their Indians brethren as traitors or cowards and treated accordingly. [Back to the point.} I moved to the reservation at four and spent all my educational life until graduation from high school in the classroom with a mix of Indians and non. Even with the serious social problems Indians students faced (extreme poverty, learning a second language often in spite of parents not speaking English, racism, alcoholism, it's a long list) the ones that stayed in school and tried did just as well as and sometimes better the non Indians. Now to claim, and it doesn't matter if this is RMP or Bo's claim, that these people had no "intellect", no power or capacity for knowledge or reason,or did it only by S/O methods, is just plain WRONG,UNTRUE,FALSE and UNGOOD. It is the worst type of Social Darwinism, RACISM period. END OF STORY But to go on where does anything RMP says below limit intellectual knowledge exclusively to the domain of science, defined as a formal practice started by the Greeks? And even if he did, is this claim true? > "The whole purpose of scientific method is to make valid > distinctions between the false and the true in nature, to > eliminate subjective, unreal, imaginary elements from one's > work so as to obtain an objective, true picture of reality." (236) If we look at what these Greek "Natural Scientists" were doing in practice, it didn't seem they weren't doing anything much different than people were doing for millennia observing, nature and trying to make valid distinctions. But there was a difference. The Indians claims are: this is a good place to hunt buffalo, lodgepole pine is good to hold up teepees, there are good huckleberrys here in the spring, this water is good to drink, this is a good plant to eat. These are all TRUTH claims based on years of experience and EXPERIMENTS that also have the added benefit of being VALUE claims. Because they are value claims does not invalidate their truth claims and if you doubt either let's set your university materials science department the task of finding a natural occurring material to hold up a teepee in this geographic area with all the scientific, social, and economic parameters you want. Run this experiment a hundred times and you will always find the TRUTH and GOOD. That selection will always be lodgepole pine. To claim that this knowledge does not rise to the class of intellectual is again the worst type of Social Darwinism, RACISM period. END OF STORY Along come the Greeks who claim in a written THEORY that TRUTH CLAIMS are superior to GOOD CLAIMS and that EXPERIMENTS are handmaidens to THEORY. Fast forward to RMP and he says wait a minute those GOOD CLAIMS are as good, often better than those TRUTH claims and certainly they must be a part of the most valuable knowledge we have. Not intellectual? OK, where are you going to put them? And don't tell me DQ, they have been stable, high quality patterns just as good and true now as they were thousands of years ago. Or at least they could have been if the wonderful science of the Greeks hadn't confused TRUTH with GOOD and thus concluding it was a GOOD idea to shit upstream of where you drink. (Hey, no it's ok we got this technology see....no problem...we run these pipe see...gather it all up see...strain it..take the solids out...clean water see...spread the solids over here see.. What? Where? Over there? Doesn't water run downhill? Yes, but....) Like a glass? "One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority. "Doctor Pinero" in Life-Line (1939) Robert Heinlein Bob, are you rolling over in your grave or just lying there laugh'n? Dave > 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/ 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/
