XCTO MAKES HIS FIRST POST IN ABOUT A YEAR AND PROBABLY FIFTH IN TWO
YEARS...AGREES MORE WITH (DAVE)DLT44 IN THAT BO'S SOLAQI IS NOT QUITE RIGHT
AND XCTO'S OPINION WHY...MAYAN CALENDAR IS PART OF THE Q-INTELLECT...NATIVE
AMERICANS DO NOT USE SubjectObjectLogic...GREEKS HATED ZERO
Hi all,
I have been lurking around for the last six years, mostly *not* reading posts
(I hope most of you are not insulted by my lack of concern for all of your
hard work). But there are times that I have actually *not* used the delete
button and read an extended thread that interested me. As I have had a lot
of respect for the ideas of Bo and Dave (DLT44) and their ability to
objectively discuss ideas that they may not agree with and still treat each
other and everyone else with a sense of respect, I tend to read their posts
and discussions more than others. There are many who treat the forum in this
way, but these guys have been around for a long time (I would also add the
names of Jonathan M., Platt, and Roger (the caps headline at the top was
Roger's idea) to the list of MOQ names that I look for - thanks guys, you are
appreciated for the many years of care and quality that you have invested the
forum).
Bo,
When you first proposed your theory, I argued against your SOLAQI on the
simple grounds that IF the entirety of the Q-Intellect Level is Subject
Object Logic (SOL) THAN any pattern of thought that is not SOL is not really
a member of Q-Intellect. The point here is "which level do these patterns of
thought fit into?" Are they Social Level? Biological Level? Inorganic?
According to Pirsig all patterns of value fit into these levels somewhere.
Taking Dave's and my own ideas about what it means to be part of the
Intellectual Level, I want to say that there are ideas outside SOL that are
part of the Q-Intellectual level and this disproves your SOLAQI Theory as I
remember it. BUT, I must add, I might not understand your SOLAQI theory as
well as I think I do, so I will await your reply.
-editorial note - it may be that my whole logical premise in the above
paragraph is wrong, so let me know...ive never taken a course on logic - xcto
A long time ago (three to five years ago), this forum had a discussion of the
basic building blocks of each level, and just recently there a was another
thread on this:
>Platt said in MD MIGHT MAKES RIGHT - Here is my vote for the organizing
forces of the four levels:
>Inorganic: Energy & Entropy
>Biological: Sex & Survival
>Social: Fame & Fortune
>Intellectual: Measurement & Number
For the intellectual level I put my money on the idea of Principles and the
creation of systems of thought (patterns) that adhered the ideas of logical
consistency, matched experimental data, and a couple other ideas (I cant
remember - Occam's Razor was in there too - it's in Lila someplace).
Taking my concept of the building blocks of the Intellectual level and
comparing it to SOM, I would have to say that there is a lot more to the
Q-Intellect level than just SO Logic.
Dave says it beautifully:
In a message dated 12/8/01 6:20:06 AM Pacific Standard Time, dlt44@ipa.net
writes:
> Q-intellect is not just "having ideas", though I agree with
> Popper that making bold conjectures or theories, often without any
> possibly knowable direct experience to support them at the time, is a
> crucial part of the intellectual experience. But an equally crucial part
> is the critical evaluation of these conjectures and theories (SOL being
> one of the methods). And if warranted the application of insights
> gained from this process to ones future actions or future conjectures. Q
> intellect is a process. A reinterative, evolving, process; sometimes
> applied to a specific problem, sometimes just for the joy of it.
>
> Let me site just one example of what I consider a "bold conjecture" that
> was an ancient and widespread indication of the emergence of the
> intellect. Laying on my back gazing at the night sky I turn to you an
> say, "I can predict when and where the moon will be sometime in the
> future." Now when this was done for the first time, by a single
> individual, in societies around the globe, with little if any passed on
> knowledge, it was a "bold conjecture" just "having an idea." But with
> that single idea, plus criticial evaluation, reinterative observations,
> more ideas, more criticial revauation, etc. isolated societies all over
> the world developed high accurate and detailed systems for predicting
> the movement of vast numbers of heavenly bodies.
>
>
> > there certainly were Q-Intellectual starts at other places than
> > Greece, but not finding a foothold have slipped.
>
> But the intellect qualities or intellectural level didn't magically
> disappear in the slippage. Nor can we make the claim that it failed to
> dominate as proscribed by the MoQ. It may, say in the Mayan culture,
> well have dominated the other levels but because it became so static, so
> restrictive, so un-dynamic their whole system failed to evolve. The
> collapse of Soviet system is a recent telling example of this. It would
> be difficult to argue that their system was lacking in intellect, or
> that the intellect failed to dominate the society. Indeed the failure
> can be traced to a highly selective intellect which overly dominated
> society restricting its evolution.
> <snip a little>
> The crux of our different views on this issue I believe is your focus on
> "first dominance" as the defining moment of the intellectual level,
>
In my opinion, Bo, your quote that the "Q-Intellectual starts that did not
find a foothold" is saying that the ideas never existed as Q-Intellectual
thoughts. Again, my question would be "where would these patterns fit into?"
Obviously, I am in the school of thought that if a tree falls in the forest
and there's no one around to hear it...the tree still makes a loud crash.
The pattern of value that the Mayans had for example (creating a calendar
that charts lunar cycles, solar and lunar eclipses for centuries at a time)
are, to me, clear examples of non-SOL Intellectual ideas. And the Mayans
have left evidence in books and stone structures even today could predict
solar events. Are these Intellectual? Social? Biological? Inorganic? I
would have to put these patterns under the Intellectual level.
Another example is this- Remember at the end of Lila. Pirsig is talking to
his Indian buddy (I think his name was John) about a dog that he sees.
Pirsig asks his friend, "What kind of dog is that?" And his friend thinks a
moment and says, "It's a good dog." Pirsig was thinking in the SOL way of
Aristotle, hoping to get an answer like "a mongrel of poodle and pit bull"
and the Indians don't use that sort of logic. Is the Indian friend using
Social level patterns of thought or is it part of the Intellectual Level
particular to the Native Americans or something outside of that? I am
actually not really sure here. In a way, the Native American was going
directly to a Dynamic Quality answer. SOM doesn't exist for John (if that
was his name), so where is his Intellectual Level? If you say you believe
SOLAQI than I think you would have to say that John would have no
Q-Intellect. You could make this argument (John was thinking that Pirsig was
worried that the dog might bite- maybe just Social (who owned the dog) or
Biological (survival)). But for me, it doesn't quite work. Whether or not a
system of thought has achieved dominance has nothing to do with it's status
as a pattern of value. And non-SOL patterns of value have survived centuries
as the bases of many cultures intellectual levels. To me that disproves
SOLAQI.
Perhaps the dominance of the SOL and it's ability to systematically engulf
any intellectual concept that it comes in contact with creates this
monolithic spectre of SOLAQI dominating everything. But I recently read a
book called "Zero - The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife.
It's about the use of zero throughout history. It mentions how the Greeks
rejected the concept of zero because of their philosophical aversion the the
concepts of voids and infinities. This book proposes that this rejection of
zero held back science and mathematics for almost two thousand years. That's
also one of the results of SOL. I highly recommend this book.
This book charts how the survival of 'zero' in other cultures (in Islam and
the East) led to the eventual and inevitable acceptance of probably the most
important mathematical concept. It also illustrates definite Intellectual
Level development outside SOL. My common sense logic says this disproves
SOLAQI, but I don't know true logic.
I'm looking forward to your comments, Bo and Dave.
xcto
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