John said to Marsha:
...when you originally flip-flopped on your support for Bo, the reason you gave
was chiefly that he'd been loyal for so long. Then came the intellectual
justification for your emotional reaction. Now I don't criticize that process,
in fact, I think it's honestly the only way we do things. We always
rationalize what we really want emotionally. Which is why I don't think the
4th level can rightly be termed "intellectual".
Marsha replied:
I might have defended Bo because of his loyalty to the MD, but that was not the
reason I came to believe Bo is correct. I was backed into a corner, he backed
me into a corner, and I was struck wordless. I realized that
conceptualization reifies. I didn't know the word then, but I clearly
understood the process. Only later did I stumble across the word 'reify' and
after reading it a number of times I recognized it as the process from which I
couldn’t escape...
dmb says:
There is an recent article in Mother Jones about "the science of
self-delsusion". While emotion is a crucial component of the overall cognitive
process, various studies show that people with deep emotional attachments to a
belief or point of view will ignore and/or attack anything that threatens to
undermine that belief. Such a person will dismiss evidence, deny facts, deny
logic and generally do whatever it takes to protect the delusion that comforts
them. Usually, this type of self-deception is found among political ideologues
and religious believers.
And in some case we even find folks who are willing to defy dictionaries and
encyclopedia articles.
If reification is an error wherein abstract concepts are mistaken for actual,
concrete realities, AND Bo's position says that the MOQ is reality, then he has
committed that error in a very big way. If Marsha actually had a realization as
to the meaning of "reification" she would not be defending Bo. She would be
using him as an example of what can go wrong when concepts are reified.
And if there is no self-delusion at work in maintaining the view assertion that
the intellectual level is equal to subject-object metaphysics, then how would
we explain the fact that they are clinging to that view despite the author's
explicit statements to the contrary? Evidence doesn't get much clearer or more
authoritative than that. What could be more rigid and static than a point of
view that will not bend in the face of such clear and obvious evidence?
What's more fun and satisfying than talking to a delusional fanatic? Almost
anything.
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