Andre, A:
> The Law is into a popularity contest? It appears to me that the more you > try to explain your position the messier it gets John. > J: Heh. Well that's true of just about any intellectual exercise Andre. It's the corollary of the Pirsigian postulate: the more you know anything about a given phenomenon the more hypothesis occur to you. All laws are social in nature - they codify the correct patterns of social relationship to a given society. They might have an intellectual inspiration and thus we label them "intellectually - oriented social codes" but they are definitely social in scope and action. A: We want to dance all night, preferably with music as loud as possible. > There are intellectual values (the Law as an expression of the intellectual > values of Justice) which state that we can do so until 10 pm... J: You believe people dance from a sense of justice? That seems weird to me. People dance because it feels good. Restricting their ability to express their joy is a social pattern - laws governing their impact on others, but NOT forbidding them to experience more biological pleasure? There's nothing intellectual about it. In fact, the reason people like to dance, is because it's non-intellectual. It's an escape from intellect. A: > a special permit may get us to 12 midnight. After transgression there will > be social sanctions (a fine, imprisonment, ban whatever). Intellectual > values are in direct competition for dominance over these social values. > Intellectual values struggle for control over these social values. The Law > IS an expression of intellectual values in competition with social values. > > J: I think the most helpful way to view it is in terms of SQ and DQ. Intellect is DQ to society's SQ. Good ideas that are commonly shared become social custom or law. The good ideas may occur intellectually, but they express socially, through law and custom. With this understanding "intellectual law" is an oxymoron. Which is not as bad as a supermoron but it's bad. A: > Let me put it another way: when something is defined as 'lawful' there > immediately appears what is 'unlawful' (two sides of the same coin). > Intellectual values called 'justice' immediately conjure up the idea of > 'injustice'. J: Hmm. I don't know if I can go with calling Justice, intellectual either. Fairness seems to be a feeling beyond intellect. That is, we reason FROM a sense of fairness, how to come up with means to accomplish justice - laws. But justice itself is prior to intellect. Justice is an aspect of Quality-beyond-intellect. Or so it seems to me. But regardless, it does indeed act through intellectual patterns which do as you say. A: > Now, can we say the values we hold signifying justice are struggling with > those values we hold signifying injustice? J: absolutely. It's analogous to the struggle between good and bad and even, as I mentioned, derivative of good and bad. A: > I prefer to suggest that there is competition between lawfulness and > lawlessness. With justice and injustice. Freedom and un-freedom. Truth and > populism. There is an ongoing struggle for domination between the two. They > are in direct competition with each other. If you want to concoct something > else of this competition well...whatever John. > J: Andre, all I've been saying is that competition is between patterns at the same level. And in your example of something competing with its negation, both are necessarily of the same levels of patterning. Individuals compete with other indivduals as both struggle through the mud. And it's not a necessary aspect of the levels - it's optional. "f you compare the levels of static patterns that compose a human being to the ecology of a forest, and if you see the different patterns sometimes in competition with each other, sometimes in symbiotic support of each other, but always in a kind of tension that will shift one way or the other, depending on evolving circumstances, then you can also see that evolution doesn't take place only within societies, it takes place within individuals too. " Lila 235 Which do you think is better Andre, competition or symbiosis? Pirsig says both occur but the higher levels have more choice in viewing things and I would say viewing things symbiotically rather than competitively is more conducive to living in justice and fairness. > > John: > > Intellect should be concerned with truth, not celebrity. > > Andre: > It is not concerned with celebrity John...that's what YOU make of this > competition/struggle. > > J: I think competition is a purely social thing. You have to have striving egos for any true competition and construing competition upon nature is an anthropocentric fallacy. We humans construe our way of competing upon the rest of nature but imho that's a low-quality intellectual premise. The zebra doesn't compete with the lion. > John: > > I believe the levels are like this - that it's "no competition" for a > society to beat up a single biological individual. > > Andre > 'Society' does not 'beat up a single biological individual' John. Your > bias shows again and again:to you society is made up of individuals. It > isn't John. > > J: Social patterns are instantiated in groups of individual beings. There can't be a society of one, and especially there can't be a society of none. I don't see how you so glibly skip over this basic empirical fact. > John: > > And certainly there is no competition between the organic and the > inorganic levels! But there is a struggle to stay alive. > > Andre: > It is a life or death competition John no matter what you make of it. > > > J: pshaw. Life and death are not in competition. And molecules certainly don't compete to see who can turn into DNA. In order for life to thrive it needs more life. Life doesn't compete and put down, it supports and builds up. Only humans compete like you describe. No matter what you make of it. > John: > I made the distinction for rhetorical, not logical reasons. You could > certainly say it, "An idea may struggle for popular acceptance but it does > not compete with popular acceptance." I mean how can you compete with what > you strive for? That would be absurd. > > Andre: > As said above John: to see intellectual patterns of value as somehow part > of a popularity contest is absurd. Einstein's Theory of Relativity (E=mc2) > in a social popularity contest? As you argue above: > 'intellectual values should be concerned with truth'. They are. They > certainly are NOT interested in, nor determined by social popularity > contests. > > J: When new intellectual patterns occur to men, they do not come from seeking abstract truth, Usually they are seeking the truth of some thing - some object-of-thought. It may very well be that the object-of-thought was in fact, some sort of popularity issue - an attempt to win a contest of some kind in order to be admitted to a society or gain fame or wealth. The intellectual patterns of logic and rationality and analysis are oriented toward ideas that have some sort of social import. Just as society's need biological beings to instantiate, so does intellect need a social matrix in order to be. These are not competing levels of evolution, any more than trees compete with the sunshine, this is a symbiotic relationship between differing patterns of being. > John: > > A parent may struggle with his child but a parent that competes with his > child has got problems. > > Andre: > Well John, not wanting to put too fine a point on it but one can also see > parent/child issues as the patterns of value a child holds are in > competition with the values the parent(s) hold. This can be cheeky > playfulness or it can be a head-on confrontation or anything in between. > Again you seem to be personalizing issues when we are supposed to be > talking about values. > > J: Well, mea maxima culpa then. You bet Andre. I believe personalizing values is the most important task at hand. I'm trying to illustrate my ideas with concrete examples. I fail to see how that's some kind problem for you. > John: > Right now the MoQ is in a position of opposition to SOM and SOM as a > metaphysics has a certain kind of society associated with it. Our struggle > isn't with social patterns per se, but bad social patterns that flow from a > bad metaphysics. We can't overcome existing social patterns by mere > intellectualizing. > > Andre: > 'As far as I know the MoQ does not trash the SOM. It contains the SOM > within a larger system. The only thing it trashes is the SOM assertion that > values are unreal'( Annotn. 135 ). > > J: So you agree with Bo then? The way I see it is MoQ is a metaphysics. SOM is a metaphysics. You only have one metaphysics at a time, so pick the best one. SOM can't be the best one because it gives no provision for "best" so follow the MoQ. Following the MoQ is overthrowing SOM. But some people think that following the MoQ means simply substituting the word "values" for the words of subjectivity and objectivty but that can't be it because it's just a meaningless semantic trick. S/O thinking is a high Quality way to conceptualize but its not the fundamental dualism of everything. So we can use words like "me" and "I" without contradicting the MoQ. A: > '...the MoQ only contradicts the SOM denial that value exists in the real > world. The MoQ says it does. Thus the MoQ ia an expansion of existing > knowledge, not a denial of existing knowledge' (Annotn 58). > > J: Perhaps I'm taking the term "metaphysics" further that Pirsig intended but it seems to me that SOM's supposition of the non-existence of value (except for subjective of course) is too big to ignore. A: > I think a good place to start will be to stop personalizing values John. > > J: He who personalizes values also values personality. And I do. > John: > I think it's more fruitful to apply Value to our objects of discussion, > than making Value the object of discussion. And if you tell me I don't > understand the MoQ after *that*statement, I'll scream. > > Andre: > As far as I am aware we do not 'apply Value to our objects of discussion' > nor do we make 'Value the object of discussion'. We are _exchanging_ values > John. And some of them clash, some compete, some agree, some struggle, some > compete etc etc. > > Okay...SCREAM! > > why? You raise intelligent and interesting questions and I value your dialogical personality. I said I'd scream if you said something along the lines of "you obviously don't understand the MoQ" but methinks you make a false semantic distinction there - an exchange of values is just a word for communication, no? Yours, John 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
