Re: LS Re: SOM and the intellect

From: B. Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Date: Wed Sep 15 1999 - 12:26:10 BST


Diana and Group plus a PS for Denis Poisson

Diana, you started your analysis of this month's topic by writing:

> Surveying the responses it seems we all agree that the Greeks marked
> an emergence of the subject-object metaphysics. With their
> separation of rhetoric from dialectic and the good from the true
> they forced the subjective to be separate and inferior to the
> objective. This leads to a metaphysics where subjects occupy a world
> that is separate and irreconcilable with the world of objects.
 
> We all also seem to agree that while the Greeks were the main
> villains, the idea was probably born a long time before and
> gradually worked its way into the culture. Language because of its
> habit of making distinctions between objects was probably the
> initial cause of this (as we discussed in the early days of the LS
 
      http://www.moq.org/old_lilasquad/9709/0039.html).

Thanks for accessing things so coolly and thoroughly, even visiting
our vaults to find one of the old posts (my browser refused to
open it :-().

To use Ken's expression my head often spins over the complexity of
the Intellectual level, at times I think I have found the solution
with my Intellect=SOM, at other times ...well.

> He then goes on to offer advantages of thinking like this. (But why should
> we consider the advantages? Are we to accept it because it would be useful
> if we did? That's not a good reason.)

"Useful" sounds so utilitarian (Dictionary: Characterized by
usefulness rather than by beauty, truth, goodness) why not VALUABLE?

Pirsig says that the MOQ doesn't ban subject-objectivity from its
universe and says that Inorganic&Organic (=objects) and
Social&Intellectual (=subjects).

At first I accepted this (and I understand what Pirsig means), but it
may mislead people to view the two lower leves as matterish, and
the two upper as mindish. One part of the MOQ can't be objective and
another subjective, the only viable way is to see the subject/object
aggregate as one separate value level.

> But, Bo, the MOQ is just a metaphysics - a map of reality. If I draw a map,
> say, of my desk and everything on it including the map, then the map would
> include the map. I don't see a problem with that.

Good point. The cartoon of a hand with a pencil drawing itself comes
to mind and I would happily accept such an argument but we have the
Strawsons of this world to cope with. Magnus Berg always stressed the
universality of a metaphysics, there's nothing outside it. The map
metaphor suggests an (objective) reality that we constantly keep
mapping, but Pirsig doesn't use it that way in the map PROJECTION
analogue. He merely says that when at the poles you have to use a
polar projection.

> I see two aspects to it. The first is the values of the intellectual level,
> namely freedom, democracy, human rights. To me these seem to arise from the
> idea of the Subject as the starting place of reality and the most important
> value of all.

Exactly, but a subject invokes an object.

> So, I find the prosecution has presented inconclusive evidence.

(Murmur of protest).
 
> However. The question is interesting. It's not enough for me to
> answer it just by saying Bo hasn't proved it. I feel I have to say
> why it's wrong and in order to do that I need to know what's right.

(Murmur of consent).
 
> I keep asking myself, what is the key to the intellectual level?

> The second is reason. How do I define reason? Uh, <reaches for
> dictionary> "intellectual faculty by which conclusions are drawn
> from premises" "express in logical or argumentative form" ugh, let's
> try logic: "a science of reasoning", "use of or ability in
> argument", okay, argue: "maintain by reasoning". Great. Apparently
> the Oxford dictionary doesn't know what reason is. Oh for goodness
> sake, I'll do it myself.
 
> If there are no camels in Germany, are there camels in Berlin?
> Reason says no. Why? Because Berlin is in Germany so a fact that
> applies to Germany also applies to Berlin. Why? Because you cannot
> have two truths about the same thing. Why? Because there is only one
> truth.

The logic is valid. The Q-Intellect is somehow the realm where
manipulation of words/ideas/concepts/abstractions by rules of
language/logic is possible. I once launched the static sequence
as an increasing "abstraction" (the quotation marks because
it's without any concrete connotation!). It went something like this.

Matter is the first abstraction of the Dynamic Quality. Biology is
the next in the sense that life is the capability to read molecular
patterns as pain or pleasure, food or poison etc. Society - in its
turn - is an abstraction of biological abstractions, reading bodily
postures as (signs meaning) benevolence or anger and a million other
things. Intellect is the - yet -final turn of the abstraction screw,
lifting social signs from the immediate to a general sphere (also
known as "mind") where they can be treated by the logic of syntax and
grammar and tossed around the way you do ;-).

But the rules of the game caught it all. A general (subjective) realm
demanded a particular (objective) realm, the Greeks adopted that
logic and the SOM was born. Perhaps (from this my reasoning) it can
be said that SOM was once just one intellectual pattern, but it has
hijacked it and the two are now identical.

Is my material more conclusive or have I painted myself into a
corner?

Bo

PS.
Denis' impressive paper arrived just before I was to send this. It
has some interesting points of similarity to my above "abstraction"
sequence (which btw is a comparison between the MOQ and Charles
Peirce's Semiotics (sign) metaphysics) I will reply to it asap.

MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org



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