> [David]
> That there's a created dichotomy between values and intellectual consistency
> doesn't mean that we ought to support just one or the other.
>
> [Arlo]
> I disagree. "Consistency" IS a value. It is not 'after-value' or opposed to
> value or something like this. Supporting intellectual consistency is really
> nothing more than supporting intellectual quality. Of course, "consistency"
> is not the only intellectual value. Pirsig lists several others, and I think
> we in an overall totality its all of these things together that make a sort
> of total quality for whatever idea is being presented.
[David]
Of course consistency is value - so is everything. Social values too - impact
the intellectual values which are created. I have been specifically speaking of
the important dichotomy between a Quality discussion and a truth seeking
dialectical one.
>
> [David]
> I'm pointing to that point *before* we begin talking consistency and validity.
>
> [Arlo]
> Which is fine, and there are many "Zen" and/or various "art" discussion
> forums all over the Internet. I'm sure in the vast majority of poetry groups,
> for example, Marsha would not be called out for inconsistency or incoherence.
> But this is a philosophy forum, David, or at least it is 'by name'. The
> purpose of this forum IS intellectual quality. I mean, intellectual quality
> MATTERS. Crafting an idea is no different than crafting a painting or
> building a rotisserie. Of all places, you think intellectual quality would be
> most important here. Instead, many seem to think jettisoning the entire idea
> of an intellectual quality in favor of a banal relativism is the way to go.
[David responds]
And I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment Arlo. But why do people value
this relativism? That's my point. You can make yourself blue in the face
talking logically and pointing out contradictions to a person who subscribes to
such ideas and you won't change a thing. The important thing is what folks
value and why they value it..
> [David]
> Yes. Consistency and validity are created by the values of interlocutor.
>
> [Arlo]
> Well, no (I think). Consistency and validity are intellectual values. To be
> sure, intellectual value emerges from the social level, and as such
> (langua)culture and histories are the ground from which intellectual
> descriptions grow. But they are not 'created' by an interlocutor in any
> decontextualized or non-experiential way. I'd say we do not so much 'create'
> consistency as we 'recognize' it.
[David]
Consistency and validity are indeed intellectual values. Important as well.
But I didn't suggest they were created in a decontextualised or
non-experiential way? Intellectual values are created the same way everything
is created - by static quality responding to DQ. I have previously
created(borrowed from Pirsig) an (IMHO important) dichotomy between truth
seeking validity and consistency against a Quality discussion. I wanted to
highlight how there is a two and a half thousand year history of seeking truth
- regardless of Quality - that it's *very* easy to forget that as we know -
the goal ought to be Quality not truth. And so as such, our method of
discussion ought to change as well.
> [David]
> There are no 'false' ideas. There is no one 'true' answer. Just a whole
> bunch of quality ideas. Some of them good. Some of them not so good.
>
> [Arlo]
> I'm not sure who you think is being attacked for "false" ideas as presented
> against the backdrop of "one true answer". I see only arguments being put
> forth showing the very low quality of some. And I also see a lot of baiting
> and frustrations, repetitions and passive-aggressive socializations.
>
> Also be clear about one thing, Marsha doesn't want this to end. She wants the
> attention. You watch, if DMB goes for more than ten days without responding
> to her posts, the frequency by which she reposts "I define static patterns
> as..." increases significantly. If you look at the archives, there's periods
> where she reposts the same copied paragraph six times in four days, until
> finally DMB calls her out on it again, and they do their back and forth, and
> Marsha gets to play poor Lila, the hero being assaulted by the mean old
> intellectual, again for a few days, and then its rinse and repeat. Watch for
> it. Simply track the posts DMB makes in reply to her and compare those to the
> posts she copies and pastes her "definition". As one goes down, the other
> goes up (one of the benefits of an archived forum is that you can run corpus
> programs on the posts).
[David responds]
Right. What is Marsha's intention? In other words - what does Marsha value?
Here you make a compelling argument that all Marsha values is attention. If
that's the case - *why* does Marsha value attention? I mean - there is a
degeneracy to someone who follows the social quality of attention over
intellectual quality of coherence but I'm not sure that's all there is to it
with Marsha… I have seen many suggestions of what Marsha values and why she
says the things that she does… Unless we heed any attention on this - nothing
will change. The values are the whole thing.
>
> [David]
> But really the goal is Quality, not truth. Don't you agree?
>
> [Arlo]
> Of course. But again, in THIS forum, are we talking about intellectual
> quality, social quality, pre-intellectual quality (and if this, then should
> we drop the "MOQ" designation and make it a 'zen-art-koan' type forum?)?
[David responds]
I think there's a *very* important distinction between talking *about*
intellectual, social and pre-intellectual quality and actually talking
intellectual, social and pre-intellectual quality. We can talk intellectually
about all levels. Talking intellectually about all the levels is a good thing.
The whole MOQ is built to talk intellectually about all the levels and DQ…
Problems arise however - when folks begin talking from the perspectives of each
of these levels and stop talking intellectually. This is a huge source of
confusion especially when talking intellectually about DQ and talking from the
perspective of DQ… This distinction is lost on Marsha - the question, I think,
is why does Marsha value talking from the perspective of DQ rather than talking
*intellectually* *about* DQ so much?
> [David previously]
> "Hi Marsha and Arlo, *Why* do you value the idea that patterns constantly
> change and the the intellectual level is made up of butterflies and candy
> apples? Please show me why those ideas are good? I'm open to those ideas
> being better than what I think.. "
>
> [Arlo responded]
> Is that how Pirsig responded to the Chairman?
>
> [David]
> I'm glad you raised this because it's a great example of exactly what I'm
> talking about..
>
> [Arlo]
> I don't see your point from the passages you posted. You'll have to explain
> this to me. How does Pirsig's response to the Chairman correlate with your
> "I'm open to these ideas being better than what I think..."?
[David responds]
At the bottom of the quote which you may or may not have missed I also wrote:
"As truth as its goal, it's easy to see how dialectic can be a lost art. "
If your interlocutor isn't interested in Quality - but in winning an argument
to find the 'truth' then regardless of whether you're open or not - you won't
find anything good.
This is my point. With Quality as the goal of a discussion - the values and
the openness of our interlocutor go from being a completely unimportant part of
the discussion to becoming the most important part of a successful discussion.
> [David]
> I just also happen to think that there's a reason why the disagreement
> between them has continued for so long relatively unchanged.
>
> [Arlo]
> Of course there is. And of course its not an intellectual-philosophical
> reason. It has nothing to do with opportunities to present ideas, or "one
> true answer", or anything else I think you can "fix" with appeals with
> intellectual quality. You can't say "present your case" at this point because
> its been presented dozens of times, and that is part of the problem. It'd be
> charitable to say its a mismatch in use of the forum, a conflict between
> 'forum as philosophy group' and 'forum as social club', but that's one way of
> framing it.
>
[David responds]
You're right - there's been plenty of presenting of values. There's been
plenty of presenting of values and plenty of dialectal argument but very little
honest questioning of why people value the things that they do. The values
though - IMHO - are the whole thing to begin with!
We can frame Marsha's only values as social and that all she is here is for
social quality. But then what? But actually - I think there's more to it than
that. Marsha's also very interested in DQ and appears somewhat interested in
amounts of intellectual quality. But there are clearly things which she values
that dmb doesn't. The question is why.
> [David]
> Of course we would. But does that solve anything? Does the person your
> calling stupid suddenly become intelligent by your saying it?
>
> [Arlo]
> Well my comment about the Buddha saying "that's just fucking stupid" is
> calling the idea, not the person, "fucking stupid". Just to be clear. But no,
> it doesn't solve anything so much as mark a point where intellectual quality
> has broken down to a point where it no longer applies. You can't 'reason'
> with someone who is fixing their beliefs tenaciously, it just doesn't work.
> You can try, and you can try again, but until the person you're talking to is
> interested in applying reason then reason isn't going to do anything. And, if
> the person you're talking to is coming from an 'anti-reason' point, then
> reason not only will be ineffective, it will reinforce the anti-reason
> position rather than weaken it.
[David responds]
I couldn't have said it any better. So I guess there *is* value in calling
something stupid. But then there *is* also value in walking away and not
belabouring the point. *Or* alternatively - there is value in asking the
person why they are saying something which we deem to be stupid? What is it
that they value which causes them to expound 'stupid' things. Why is it good
for us to value them?
> [David]
> Our goal is Quality - not truth and I rarely agree with Ian - but on this I
> do - 'We all seem to be saying that Quality is the goal but few of us have
> actually changed our behaviour to match this stated goal.'
>
> [Arlo]
> I might agree up to the point where abandoning intellectual quality is seen
> as mandatory to reach the goal of Quality (I'm assuming you're using
> "Quality" here as an overall (IBSI Quality) and not "Dynamic Quality").
> Indeed, I'd restate the comment as this (and ask you what you think the
> difference is).
[David clarifies]
Correct - overall Quality. There are Pirsig quotes which explain that Quality
post Lila means DQ+SQ. He also mentions that for clarity it's best to use one
or the other. So I could just say that our goal is high static quality.. But it
really doesn't look quite so good. :-)
> 'We all seem to be saying that intellectual Quality is the goal but few of us
> have actually changed our behaviour to match this stated goal.'
>
> If intellectual quality is the goal, what are the milestones to reach that
> goal? If not consistency and validity (and the other ones mentioned by
> Pirsig), then what?
>
> Or is this what you and Ian mean, 'We all seem to be saying that social
> Quality is the goal but few of us have actually changed our behaviour to
> match this stated goal.'
>
> Fair enough. I have neighbors that insist on mowing their lawn at 7am on
> Saturdays. I bite my tongue because I insist on driving my Harley home* at
> 2am. So sure, we should be nicer to our neighbors... even if they are idiots.
> ;-)
>
> * I haven't ridden since the accident, but pick up the Harley tomorrow
> afternoon. I hope. Depends on the level of pain.
[David responds]
Like it or not - MD has its own culture. MD is a cultural place whose stated
goal ought to be (IMHO) intellectual quality and the quality of which is
created by *every* member. So along these lines - following your sentiment -
we should be nice to our neighbors... even if they are idiots. Or to put it
another way - caring is the other side of quality - it improves the quality of
all things.
> [David]
> MD already has rules - like Ian, are you not happy with the ones which are
> setup currently?
>
> [Arlo]
> Most of this is a non-issue to me, although I think the problem is attracting
> more people into the dialogue who are interested in actually philosophical
> dialogue. I have ignore filters I use for those who I find offer nothing but
> low quality ideas, and I have highlighting filters I use for those who I find
> offer only high quality ideas. I support Horse's decisions to remove low
> quality contributors when they start dominating via frequency and volume, or
> when they repeatedly violate the broadest guidelines of intellectual quality
> ('Pirsig is a weak interpreter of the MOQ' has to be among my favorites). So
> I wouldn't add "rules" in the sense I'd suggest a re-examination of intent.
[David responds]
So just to be clear - you suggest that if someone's intent is only social
quality for instance - then a removal would be the right thing? I'm not saying
I don't disagree - but what if(for instance) there is a Mystic on this
*intellectual* discussion board? Do we remove them then as well? If so - would
you suggest that these rules be added to the list?
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