Hi DMB, > > dmb said to Bo: > > ...Pirsig refers to Quality (DQ) and the "pre-intellectual" reality. > You repeatedly take this as a reference to social static patterns. > Because they evolved prior to intellect, you figure, social patterns > are "pre-intellectual". > > > > Mary replies: > Dmb, I can't believe you just said that! ...Come on now. That's a > straw-man argument if I've ever heard one and does not further the > conversation. I'm enjoying this exchange, but you need to confine your > objections to things Bo really said if you want to keep it productive. > ...It's only fundamentally wrong when based upon your accusation above. > Since this is something Bo (and the rest of us) have never said, you > can expect no argument. We all see this as fundamentally wrong too and > just kind of wonder how you managed to stray off into this > fundamentally wrong area. Let's keep it real, > > dmb says: > > I've strayed off on a straw man? But I quoted Bo making this mistake. I > caught him red-handed and included Bo's claim in his own words along > with my comments. How can you possibly construe that as straw man or a > wrong area? And why did you exclude Bo's quote from your objections? > Why disappear the statement in dispute? That's sloppy at best and maybe > even a bit dishonest, don't you think. Imagine the situation were > reversed. How'd you like it if I deleted your evidence and dismissed > your point as unfounded? Isn't that like taking a guys shoes and then > laughing at him for being bare-footed? Might make a decent practical > joke but it's no way to have a sincere conversation. > [Mary Replies] Sure. Here's Bo's original post in its entirety with your original comments in it. I cut out a bunch of it before because you guys were arguing about a couple of different things and I wanted to discuss only the one. Secondly - and most importantly to our current conversation - I can't find anywhere in Bo's comments where he equates the Social Level with Dynamic Quality itself.
If you read it, all Bo is doing is paraphrasing what Pirsig himself said in several different places in Lila - see below some of them. Now I figure you are zeroing in on Bo's use of the word "arête" in this phrase, " Socrates represents SOM's independence from the Arete past", and I say you really don't want to go there. I understand fully that Pirsig goes to great lengths in Chapter 24 I think it is to nail down the precise original meaning of the root word of "arête", which I recall to be "rta". But if your argument is that Bo is saying that arête = Dynamic Quality = The Social Level, then what am I to do with you, DMB? :) Do you really think Bo is saying that Socrates escaped from Dynamic Quality? This would be a straw man indeed. You know that is not what Bo meant and you also know that just because the original meaning of the root word for arête may have meant something akin to DQ that is not how arête as a word was probably generally understood in Greek times. I imagine we have no idea how "arête" was used in Greek times, and no way of finding out now. In fact, I think I may have seen this exact admission in Lila somewhere. As I recall, Pirsig's point about arête was not that arete = DQ unequivocally as used by everyone in ancient Greece, but that it was a word with multiple layers of meaning with a very interesting past which may have evolved from the much older word rta which does seem to mean something similar in concept to DQ. - and, that the only reason all this fuss about this word is significant at all, is because Pirsig was looking for a precedent in history for the concept of Dynamic Quality. Whew! ...and to think I was trying so hard to avoid writing long, boring posts. hehehe [Lila, Ch. 20] 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. [Bo said] Socrates represents SOM's independence from the Arete past, here he is > said to represents the intellectual level's independence of its social > origin (all levels have their origin in the former level). [Lila, Ch. 22] within historical time, the day Socrates died to establish the independence of intellectual patterns from their social origins. [Lila, Ch. 24] What the Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that it is only social values and morals, particularly church values and morals, that science is unconcerned with. There are important historic reasons for this: The doctrine of scientific disconnection from social morals goes all the way back to the ancient Greek belief that thought is independent of society, that it stands alone, born without parents. Ancient Greeks such as Socrates and Pythagoras paved the way for the fundamental principle behind science: that truth stands independently of social opinion. It is to be determined by direct observation and experiment, not by hearsay. Religious authority always has attacked this principle as heresy. For its early believers, the idea of a science independent of society was a very dangerous notion to hold. People died for it. The Original Post: ****************** Hi DMB 24 Apr.: Bodvar said: > Need I spoon-feed you weak-interpreters? (*) In a ZAMM context > Socrates represents SOM's independence from the Arete past, here he is > said to represents the intellectual level's independence of its social > origin (all levels have their origin in the former level). Without > resorting to smoke-screens, how is this glaring fact explained? dmb says: > Here you have a major misconception sandwiched between two insults. > Between the spoon-feeding and the smoke-screens, you're equating Arete > with social static patterns. Arete is not social and it's not > patterned either. In the context of ZAMM, the Arete that was lost was > the Dharma, the Quality that the Sophists were teaching. You see insults round all corners. "Weak" only refers to the weak/strong interpretations and "smoke-screens" ... well we may all resort to that in evading the issue. About Aretê being the social level in a MOQ retrospect is so obvious that you have to be hell-bent on NOT admitting it. It was the Homer's time in Greece "...when the social level weren't yet transcended" as it says in LILA. "In the context of ZAMM"? Isn't ZAMM supposed to be seen in the context of MOQ? As said to Andre: If the SOM-Aretê transition were just something going on at the intellectual level then - what you claim is Sophist's Quality was also an intellectual phenomenon and - ergo - everything - Quality included - becomes intellectual and the MOQ has turned into (SOM's) idealism. > While it certainly is true that the static intellectual level was > separating from the static social level in this same historic period, > this is not to be confused with the loss of dynamic quality. In ZAMM Pirsig presented it as if Quality itself "ruled" - or was expressed by - the attitude of the old Homeric warriors, but it's plain silly to believe that DQ was more prominent at some particular time in history. And its just as plain that the Aretê represents social values, the duty, honour, valor, contempt for death that Hector displays is the same as the islamists suicide "pilots" showed. This is the "paradise lost" longing. > Sadly, Bo, your interpretation of the MOQ is "riddled" with such > misconceptions. I on my side can't fathom how you can stand ZAMM as some "loose tooth" without any firm ties to the MOQ. Or how Pirsig can for that matter all the time the SOLution is there big as a barn door. > In fact, another related mistake springs to mind. Pirsig refers to > Quality (DQ) and the "pre-intellectual" reality. You repeatedly take > this as a reference to social static patterns. Because they evolved > prior to intellect, you figure, social patterns are "pre-intellectual". > What it actually refers to is the cutting edge of experience, the > front edge of each moment, the eternal present. In other words, the > pre-intellectual reality is Dynamic Quality, not social static quality. The Pre-intellect/Intellect transition was Pirsig's effort (in ZAMM) to show how that there was something prior to the subject/object division. It's difficult to know the exact "timeline" of P's way to the Quality Insight, but I guess this was after the "dilemma" and the insight that's Quality was what spawned the subject/object choice. Now, in the MOQ context "intellect" is the last or highest level, thus what precedes intellect must necessarily have been the social, but mark you, all level have once been the "cutting edge" and the formation of a new level was in all cases as dynamic as dynamic comes. No problems there > In both cases, these are misconceptions about the central term in > Pirsig's work. And so your theory is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong. It > undermines and destroys the main point of the MOQ, to improve the > intellect at its roots by introducing Quality as a working concept in > Art, Science and Religion. Your SOL is profoundly unhelpful toward > that effort. Plus it doesn't makes any sense. Well, I know this mantra, but it's because you want the MOQ to be an academical phenomenon something going on inside an intellect which isn't MOQ's 4th. level, but good old-fashioned MIND of MAN. And for the SOL that rejects mind and matter it's poison. Bodvar 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/md/archives.html
