Hi John, Ron, Mary, all, I think intellectual quality is is like every other sort of quality, isn't it? It is just the usual undefined betterness of Quality. When we say an idea is good we mean "good" in the same way we do when we say a chocolate cake is good. What distinguishes intellectual quality from other sorts of quality is only the sorts of patterns we are referring to with this general undefined betterness. Intellectual patterns are patterns of manipulations of symbols. What emerged in the evolution of the intellectual level was not a new Quality but a new sort of way of having quality.
What makes one pattern of manipulation better than another? We can only say after the fact by inferring from the sorts of patterns which have risen to the top as recognized for their high quality. Ones that cohere with out other high quality patterns of symbol manipulation are generally seen as good as are ones which follow the laws of logic (which is again a sort of coherence with other patterns deemed to be of high quality). Simple explanations are favored over complex ones. Ones which explain a broad range of experience are favored over ones which only explain a narrow range of experience. We favor dynamic ones that say something new, yet not so new as to be incoherent with our existing patterns. Some intellectual patterns such as a Beethoven symphony are generally thought of as good, but we still haven't come up with ways of describing what is good about them since coherence, logic, and parsimony don't seem to fit (though musicologists can come up with other ways of describing their quality). Notice that nowhere in here did I need to appeal to a metaphysical subject-object dichotomy. Distinguishing things which are ontologically objective from those which are ontologically subjective is only one particular intellectual practice. It is far from the only one. For Mary, in case I've sounded too highbrow, I'll close by saying the SOL is just dumb.. Best, Steve 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
