Greetings Dan,
Hi John, thank you for writing. No mistake though. > > John: Well, I still say it was a mistake. But evidently an intentional one. I can see we're gonna argue then. oh goody. > Dan: > If you are using your own insights here, then there is no reason for > this discussion to progress. John: I'd say the opposite. I'd say that if I wasn't going to contribute any original insight here, then there is absolutely no reason for the discussion to progress. I mean, anyone can clip and paste, eh? Dan: According to the Metaphysics of Quality, > intellect grows out of social patterns of value. Every social pattern > of value is an idea. We cannot put them under a microscope and examine > them. But not every idea is a social pattern of value. Does that help? > > John: Any idea which is not social, is the same as any individual that is not biological - it has failed to instantiate. It doesn't exist. In order for ideas to be real, they must be communicated. I don't see how you can argue about this, when the best use of the levels is by understanding the relationship from lower to higher and applying those relationships analogically. I comprehend that all biology requires inorganic patterns as part of its biological patterning, and by this I can conclude that all intellectual patterns require social patterning as part of its intellectual patterning. If the model doesn't work consistently, what good is it? Social patterns of value are not necessarily ideas. Anymore than compounds of carbon and water combined are necessarily life. A chemistry professor, rotting on a rock is no longer alive, even though he's got the same body. A social pattern, such as lying down in the same place every night, huddled next to my tribal members, wandering out the next day and then coming back to the cave where it's warm and I've got other eyes and senses to warn of predators, is no intellectualized "idea". It's just common herd behavior. Much of human existence follows these ancient social patterns and we get ideas about them later, but at the roots, we don't need abstract ideas to reinforce "warmth good - cold bad" The pattern of social bonding is independent of idea. > >John: > > I believe we mean social to pertain to the consciousness of self and > other. > > This self-realization doesn't pertain to life forms simpler than > mammalian, > > in my view. Pirsig postulates that it doesn't pertain to animals simpler > > than human, but that's an ongoing debate. > > Dan: > Again, unless you are willing to delve into the MOQ quite a bit deeper > than I have seen, there is no room for discussion. I don't mean to be > mean but we are not here to examine what you believe. We need to keep > the MOQ in mind in order to understand one another. Otherwise, I am > simply not interested. > John: So by this then, you're only interested in a careful parrotting of the MoQ orthodoxy Dan? As Pirsig described it in ZMM, the student figures out what the teacher wants to hear, and then tries to restate it as exactly as possible, only in different words, perhaps? Pirsig himself disparaged this approach as being of extremely low quality. The book makes an awful big deal around the final conflict where the chairman barks at Phaedrus: "We are not here to find out what YOU think." I don't want to be mean either, but if your brain can't find room for discussion, maybe you oughta expand it a little. 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
