Re: LS New Program: The Greeks, the SOM and the intellectual level
Hi Squad, > Seen in the light of the MOQ, what is it that is described in the last part of > ZMM (The Greeks). Is it the emergence of SOM, the"coming of age" of the > Intellectual level, or...? Elements of subject/object thought must have greatly predated the Greek philosophers. Linguistically, subject and object entities are apparent throughout the Indo-European language group and even in other language groups. This pushes back the concepts tens of thousands of years. Intellectual patterns surely emerged greatly before the Greeks. I would characterise intellect as a capacity to "reason", to achieve things by DESIGN rather than by trial and error. Natural evolution proceeds in small increments. Human planning produces dramatic results, expected (i.e. planned) but greatly removed from previous experience. Human planning created agriculture, built the pyramids, circumnavigated the globe, put men on the moon, exploded atom bombs ... IMHO, what happened with the Greeks is that the dialectic became dominant because of its extreme utility as an intellectual tool. We see this in the spectacular progress of science and technology at the time. However, with Socrates and Plato, the dialectic was also given an ethical primacy which it hadn't enjoyed before. This ethical primacy means that the dialectic became the standard measure of everything else. Since the Greeks, we've seen human beliefs and myths eroded as they fail to measure up in dialectical terms. According to Pirsig, that erosion became a landslide as a result of WW1. The "fatal flaw" that Pirsig saw is that we have now forgotten to even consider how the dialectic itself "measures up". Jonathan MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
LS New Program: The Greeks, the SOM and the intellectual level
Hi Squad Our program for the month will be: Seen in the light of the MOQ, what is it that is described in the last part of ZMM (The Greeks). Is it the emergence of SOM, the"coming of age" of the Intellectual level, or...? I hope Bodvar will give us a lead on this one as he's done more thinking on this subject than anyone else. Those of you who voted for Marco's suggestion on when and why the intellectual level was born will probably find this is quite close to that subject. In answering this question we will have to examine both the subject-object metaphysics and the intellectual level and find out what they are, and how they relate, and if, indeed, they are the same thing, as some have suggested. In the meantime, I'm off to read ZMM, again. Diana *** Results of vote 1. 3 votes (Avid Anand, John Boone, Johannes Volmert) 2. 6 votes (David Buchanan, Cntryforce, Erik de Vries, Bodvar Skutvik, Ken Clark, Taner Ackdeniz) 3. 1 vote (Kevin Sanchez) 4. 1 vote (Jonathan Marder) 5. 1 vote (John Beasley) 6. 4 votes (Marco, Andrea Blumberg, Cory Ramage, David Atherfold) MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
