From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2004 - 14:44:17 GMT
Bo said:
Social value is crucial in understanding the MOQ. I must again mention
DMB and his splendid defense of it, linking it to the mythological past.
Regrettably he got "seduced" by Paul Turner and has now turned silent
for the reason that he sees that his original take of it aligns with
mine, but as he has rejected my SOL-idea he is now stuck and have lost
his once great drive.
Paul:
I see, when David agrees with you he shows his "great drive," when he
agrees with me he has been "regrettably seduced" and is now "stuck" as a
result. I would argue that one is only "stuck" when one feels he must
hold to a position to protect an image or an ego. As David, like most on
this site, has been willing to modify his understanding in the past, I
don't think this is the case.
However, apart from belittling David's ability to discern the quality of
intellectual patterns regardless of who holds them, your conclusion
about the consequences of my definition of society and intellect is also
incorrect.
The social level is in no way diminished by my understanding of the
difference between these two levels. First, according to the MOQ,
evaluation does not require thought. Therefore, the MOQ allows us to say
that evaluation, that is preference, that is assertions of value are
made socially, biologically, inorganically and Dynamically without the
need for thought. Thus, by acknowledging the existence of social forces
distinct from thought and in a unique level of their own, I am not
belittling the social level, I am denying the presumed ubiquity of
thought in our daily, decision-making, cultural lives. (It is perhaps a
result of the substance based metaphysical reduction of subjective
patterns of society to ethereal by-products of matter that the reality
of social forces is difficult to see, despite experiencing them everyday
of our lives). By insisting that thought is involved in social patterns,
I think you are the one belittling the forces operating at the social
level by giving thought too much credit and influence.
Second, if you accept that the MOQ evolutionary principle of "movement
towards betterness" is a sufficient explanation for the presence of the
universe and the life that inhabits it, I fail to see why you cannot
accept that the achievements of the social level cannot be adequately
explained by the force of Dynamic Quality interacting with static social
patterns. Again, I think you are giving thought too much credit.
This over-estimation of thought occurs again in your postulation of a
fifth level that can contain Dynamic Quality within a metaphysics
(because you think metaphysics is reality) and the way you insist that
the intellectual level cannot be mind or the level of ideas (because
that would mean that your fifth level, which contains the MOQ, is a
static level beyond mind and thinking, yet we can obviously think about
the MOQ), despite all of Pirsig's writing to the contrary.
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