Arlo said to Ian:
I didn't think you made a point that warranted addressing, apart from
accusations of "SOMist intellectual perspective" that you hadn't defined. But,
okay, let's see what kind of 'addressing' I can give this.
Ian replied:
"In order to free oneself from the choking dogma of intellectual patterns ....
one does have to recognise that the dogma of what counts as coherent - valid
argumentation - is itself such an intellectual pattern."
Arlo said back:
What is it you'd like me to address? You restated my evaluation of your posts
to express what you think better states your position. Okay. First, I'd say you
remain 'stuck' in viewing intellectual qualities like coherence and precision
as 'dogma' or 'SOMist', and you seem to equate "valid argumentation" as
something that 'restricts' intellectual quality. Given this, I am not sure what
you THINK would evidence high quality intellectual patterns, but I would still
evaluate your position as stuck in "intellect=SOM". This is why I jumped to
your other point. Since you equate 'coherence' and (now) 'valid argumentation'
as SOMist (and over several recent emails, as I pointed out), rather than as
exemplars of high quality intellectual patterns, I asked what you consider to
be 'non-SOMist' intellectual patterns. In other words, by regressing "dogma"
back to even include a concept like "coherence", you're moving into the same
sort of vacuous nihilism that the MOQ argues against. And I guess this hinges
on this question. "Coherence" is an intellectual pattern, but is it an "SOMist
intellectual pattern"? If so, are you suggesting we redefine 'coherence', and
how? Or, are you suggesting that incoherent intellectual patterns are what the
MOQ offers to counter "SOMist intellect"? Or...?
dmb says:
A very crucial and persistent mistake is on full display here. The disease is
equated with the cure once again. People like Ian and Marsha keep dismissing
the arguments and evidence against it because they confuse things like
coherence and valid argumentation with the disease instead of the cure.
I guess everyone agrees that SOM is the disease but Ian and Marsha don't seem
to understand where this problem ends and the MOQ's intellect begins. This
vicious circle treats the MOQ as if it were an enemy of the MOQ. As they see
it, static intellectual patterns of value are not a species of the Good. Any
kind of intellectual value is a choking dogma, according to these guys. So
intellect itself becomes their enemy, not SOM as such.
The evidence against this view is pretty straight forward and I've posted lots
of it many times. This is what our anti-intellectualists have been evading for
a very long time. To add even more impediments to the possibility of progress,
growth or learning, the arguments and evidence are always dismissed as a
personal attacks, as mere rhetoric, as mere opinion, as a baseless accusation.
These are pretty lame excuses for failing to deal with the substance of the
matter. As a result, the criticism just never gets addressed in any reasonable
way. That's why this goes on year after year.
This is a philosophical discussion group. We're talking about a philosophy
(MOQ) that says logical consistency is one of the tests of truth and Pirsig
claims that the MOQ meets these tests. How can anyone dismiss the value of
logical consistency in such a context? Logically inconsistent ideas are
incoherent ideas precisely because they fall apart like a rickety old shack
that was hastily hammered together from ill-fitting parts. How could
contradiction or inconsistency ever be considered a good thing in such a
context? It simply defies reason and all of the textual evidence. It also
defies the English language.
coherent |kōˈhi(ə)rənt|adjective1 (of an argument, theory, or policy) logical
and consistent : they failed to develop a coherent economic strategy.• (of a
person) able to speak clearly and logically : she was lucid and coherent and
did not appear to be injured.2 united as or forming a whole : divided into a
number of geographically coherent kingdoms.
"Coherence" is a good word to use when talking about the MOQ and especially the
MOQ's levels of static quality. Pirsig points out (in LILA) that even a chair
or a glass of water is a little moral order because of the way it coheres or
holds together. The word comes from Latin cohaerent and literally means
‘sticking together’. But, as Pirsig also points out, the values that hold a
glass of water together are very different from the values that hold a nation
together. (Inorganic patterns are very different from social patterns.) This
goes for intellect as well. The coherence of an idea is what keeps it from
falling apart - as an idea. An incoherent thought or position is like a broken,
leaky glass, like a sick or dying animal, or like a crumbling nation.
"The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and
economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these." (Pirsig in
Lila, chapter 8.)
"A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any
metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 64.)
"Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them."
(Emphasis is Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.)
"James said, 'Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a
category distinct from good, and coordinate with it'. He said, 'The true is
the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.' TRUTH IS A
SPECIES OF GOOD. That was EXACTLY what is meant by the MOQ. Truth is a static
intellectual pattern WITHIN a larger entity called Quality."" (Emphasis is
Pirsig's. Lila, chapter 29.)
Before the end of this chapter, just a page or two later, Pirsig goes on to
explain what this truth theory means within the larger structure of the MOQ.
"In the past empiricists have tried to keep science free from values. [That is
SOM = value-free science or objectivity.] Values have been considered a
pollution of the rational scientific process. But the MOQ makes it clear that
the pollution is from threats to science by static lower levels of evolution:
static biological values such as the biological fear that threatened Jenner's
small pox experiment; static social values such as the religious censorship
that threatened Galileo with the rack. The MOQ says that science's empirical
rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is
also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a
higher evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns. But the
MOQ also says that DQ - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical
solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing,
inconclusive one - is another matter altogether. DQ is a higher moral order
than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science
to try to suppress DQ as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific
method. Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of
scientific progress itself. ... Through this identification of pure value with
pure experience, the MOQ paves the way for an enlarged way of looking at
experience which can resolve all sorts of anomalies that traditional empiricism
has not been able to cope with."
I think it's quite clear that there are all kinds of ways to describe
intellectual quality WITHOUT getting it mixed up with SOM. Even while he is
rejecting SOM for an expanded and improved form of rationality, an artful
rationality, Pirsig is still listing the basic criteria by which intellectual
quality is evaluated. This includes things like elegance and not sloppiness,
precision and not vagueness, clarity and not confusion, definable terms and not
made up or arbitrary meanings, logical consistency and not incoherence or
inconsistency, economy of explanation and not verbose, rambling drivel, and one
of my favorites that could be discussed at great length, agreement with
experience. This is another way of saying that high quality ideas are supported
by empirical evidence, that all of our knowledge and all our truths are derived
from experience. And that is another way of saying that intellectual quality
exists within a larger entity called Quality, which is a fine way to say that
good ideas are the ones that serve the ongoing process of life and evolution.
Morality is not served by simply rejecting intellectual values as dogmatic and
oppressive but by the recognition of DQ as "the value-force that chooses an
elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment
over a confusing, inconclusive one".
In other words, DQ is the value-force that chooses coherent idea over
incoherent ideas, that chooses logical consistence over contradictions or
confused notions. It's what guides the selection of beautiful ideas over clumsy
and clunky notions. SOM is nothing like this. In the MOQ, intellect is not
polluted by values but rather IS a certain kind of value, a species of the
good. In the MOQ, intellect is centered around DQ and subordinate to DQ but SOM
totally fails to acknowledge the value of values in our ways of thinking. Where
Pirsig emphasizes the role of DQ, as the source and substance of everything, as
the generator of all static patterns, SOM thinks that truth is only true when
it's free of values. That's the problem, not coherence or elegance, consistency
or evidence.
In order to stop treating the cure as if it were the disease, Ian and Marsha
have to first understand the difference between SOM and the MOQ. Obviously,
they don't see the difference. Anti-intellectualism is an inevitable result of
this confusion. What's worse, of course, is that it totally misconstrues and
undermines the whole point and purpose of the MOQ. This confused
anti-intellectualism is effectively a form of anti-MOQism.
Well, if stuckness is an opportunity for growth then these guys must have one
heck of an opportunity because I've never seen such stuckness. This same
mistake has been repeated too many times in too many ways to count even though
it makes no sense and there is a ton of evidence against it. They are as stuck
and dogmatic as any fanatic or fundamentalist ever was. It's desperately
tenacious, rigid as a corpse, and deaf and dumb as a bag of rocks.
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