Re: LS Time To Stand and Be Counted

From: Denis Poisson (Denis.Poisson@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Sep 25 1999 - 15:02:24 BST


Hi, Squad,

Well, if it's time to take a stand, there is mine :

RISKYBIZ9@aol.com wrote:
> Bo:
> >When concluding as I will below I appeal to your collective goodwill.
> >Theorizing, naming - thinking - about animals and things even about
> >thinking itself - is not going on in an abstract sphere about
> >something more real in another concrete sphere. Q- INTELLECT IS THE
> >ABILITY TO MAKE THE BI-SPHERIC DISTINCTION ITSELF. The highest and
> >most valuable stage that evolution has reached - yet.
>
> I read this as Bo saying that the intellectual level is the creator of the
> spheres. The distinction makes the 'abstract' and the 'concrete' realms.
> This I do agree with 100%. I also agree with Denis though that if Bodvar
> meant that the spheres have independent existence and are 'discovered' by the
> intellect , that Bo would indeed be prescribing a Cartesian dualism.
>

In fact I wonder if I wasn't somewhat unjust with Bo. Bo wasn't really
wallowing back into SOM but making an unnecessary subsumation of SOM
into MOQ. He never really answered my critic that S/O division wasn't a
primary function of Language and/or Intellect, but I think the above
quote shows how important he thinks this division is.
He believes it is the highest stage of intellectual evolution, and,
following the SOLAQI idea, the actual birth of the Intellectual level,
its leaving
the Social level.
This idea (as I stated in my 'SOLAQI ? Why not ?' post) has its value,
but saying that it is the primordial stage of Intellect leaves me
somewhat baffled. In a private exchange I wrote :

> The problem I see with
> your vision that S/O Logic has to be the initial Dynamic foundation of
> Intellect, is twofold :
>
> 1. How are we to differentiate pre-Socratic societies from social
> animals ? Are "primitive men" (those not yet sold to the SOM world-view)
> nothing more intelligent than dogs ? You say that we have to
> differenciate Intellect from Mind, but WHAT is there between animal
> societies and human non-SOM ones ? What is it if not Intellect ?
> Super-society ? How comes only humans have it ?
>
> 2. SOLAQI creates a fifth level that is supposed to grow FROM S/O Logic.
> But Pirsig DESTROYED S/O Logic ! He has invalidated the very AXIOMS of
> S/O Logic !
> -> Truth isn't primary (Good is)
> -> the primary division of reality isn't Subject and Object (or whatever
> SOM stuff you want there)
>
> The MOQ isn't the verge of a new fifth level, it is a crucial stage in
> the evolution of the intellect. Intellect is leaving the primal waters
> of mythology (even the scientific one) and is learning to walk on its
> feet ! And the firm ground under them is QUALITY.
>

[ROGER]
> Bo?

[ME]
Bo ?

Back to the questions :

> So let me ask EVERYBODY that contributed this month, and all the lurkers, two
> questions:
>
> 1) Are all patterns of value also intellectual patterns?
>

Since I was the one to propose this assertion as a MOQ axiom, the answer
is obviously YES. What else can they be ? Pirsig creates them in Lila,
in an act he rightly interprets as a DQ event : "The division he finally
settled on was one he didn't really choose in any deliberative way. It
was more as if IT chose HIM."
Lila, p.125 (paperback edition)
This was the initial choice of DQ/SQ, from which the four levels are
deduced.
As I said before, any assertion is a product of language, and language
produces meanings, which are Intellectual static patterns of value. The
assertion that static reality is composed of four levels : inorganic,
biological, social and intellectual - is a complex intellectual static
pattern of value. When each of the level is described, the assertions
about them are also intellectual patterns, and so on. All we CAN talk
about is words, which were initially deduced from DQ. Dynamic Quality is
a notion that was deduced from DQ. The word is not the thing.

So all patterns of value are also intellectual patterns. Never forget
that you're only talking.

> 2) Were the 4 levels of the MOQ discovered or created?
>

Hah ! Complex question, this. Patterns of value sound a bit like
Aritotle's Forms, which are to be empirically experienced even if matter
isn't. Do we experience patterns ?
Following Pirsig original claim, we see the answer : Quality is
experienced, patterns are deduced. So patterns are the illusion. They
are 'maya', the illusion of the phenomenal world, the illusion of the
Many in the One. Still, we fall here into the mystic trap of not being
able to say anything about the world in which we live. For humanity,
this has very little pragmatic value. The DQ/SQ division can help us
there again.
>From a Dynamic point of view, patterns don't exist. Everything changes,
nothing is really similar and nothing really lasts. So patterns (and
therefore the four levels) are inventions of the human intellect. They
were created.
>From a Static point of view, the PoV of Knowledge, the patterns are
everything. If there is only DQ, all is Chaos. In this view, it is
ludicrous (it hasn't got any Quality) to say that Intellect created the
world, because we then fall in the Idealist side of SOM (Solipsism). So
we have to say that we discovered the patterns.

The power of the MOQ is that it unifies the two PoVs under the DQ/SQ
division and THEIR RELATIONSHIP.

"Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they
demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns,
nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic
progress from degenaration. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of
freedom, creates this world in which we live, these patterns of static
quality, the quality of order, preserves our world. Neither static nor
Dynamic Quality can survive without the other." - Lila, p. 139 -

So in fact, the question about whether the levels were created or
discovered, about whether they exist or are human inventions, can only
be answerd by "Mu".

Enlarge your thoughts, see the interrelationships between the world and
your knowledge of it. Creation and Discovery mean the same thing. It
means 'to encounter DQ'.

We create our discoveries. We discover our creations.

This is my highest-quality answer.

Be good

Denis

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



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