Ian said:
Tell me, how many of you listened to the Thinking Allowed piece before reading
the web page ? And how many vice versa? How much of people's hearing and
reading really reflects the attitude they bring to the piece. ...For sure, if
I'd read that page in isolation before hearing the interview - my attitude to
Angell would undoubtedly have been different. Even now I question how
"agnostic" he is. But as a self-proclaimed agnostic, correcting the interviewer
who asked if he was promoting faith as an alternative to science, he his hardly
a religious fanatic.
dmb says:
Not that it makes any difference but I heard the interview before I read that
web page. He seemed quite shrill and angry and anti-intellectual to me even
before reading that page. And the interviewer asked Angell if he was promoting
faith because he got the same impression, obviously. Angell's denial struck me
as completely incoherent and implausible, if not downright dishonest. He's only
doing what Christian apologists have been doing since for a century or two and
it shouldn't fool anyone, let alone a MOQer. I mean, if you've read Pirsig and
you still don't see what's happening here then you never will. If you have the
benefit of the MOQ's analysis of the evolutionary conflict between social and
intellectual values and you still don't know how to read situations like this,
then there's no hope that you ever will know how to read this stuff.
You know, I'm glad that sometimes we debate things like the first amendment,
politics and religion. When I see how these outside issues are interpreted and
understood it becomes fairly apparent that our differences over the MOQ really
come down to each person's ability to simply comprehend what they're reading.
When the debate centers around ideas and assertions that are far, far simpler
than metaphysics, it's much easier to see that some MOQers are just not very
good at reading or thinking in general. And it will probably sound like mere
insult, but I sincerely think that it is not just a co-incidence that
anti-intellectual attitudes are most often expressed by those with the weakest
intellectual skills. Likewise, the best thinkers are not hostile to the
intellect. Psychologically speaking, this makes perfect sense. This is what the
research shows.
Evolution doesn't just occur for whole societies, it goes on in individuals
too. The MOQ says that a society dominated by intellectual values is absolutely
superior to one that does not. This goes for individuals too. In fact, you
can't really separate them. To have a society guided by intellectual values, we
first need people to be guided by intellectual values. And yet right here,
where everyone should be able to see that, we have folks who think science and
intellect and philosophy IS the problem. As they see it, rationality doesn't
HAVE a problem. It doesn't HAVE a flaw. To them, intellect IS the flaw. And the
people who believe this, what are they pushing? Religion, intelligent design,
free-market capitalism, reactionary politics, the denigration of science and
scientists, anti-academic attitudes, and the occasional bout of bigotry.
They're pushing social level values and so intellectual values are threatening.
So instead of correcting the defect in the intellect, they d
efine the intellect as the defect itself. Like Arlo said so long ago, they've
confused the patient with the disease.
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