Hi Scott,
Wow. Thanks for this excellent post of clarity and preciseness of your
position.
Much of it I have to ponder to do it respond adequately. But one thing
struck me and to this I am addressing now.
I have chopped up your post below to reflect only the single issue I want
to raise. At another post I will return to more of your statements.
----- Original Message -----
From: Scott R <jse885@spinn.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness
> Gary and John,
>
> First there were a couple of misunderstandings in Gary's post, so let me
> tackle them first:
>
> [Gary:]If you and Bo want to keep 'non-reflective'/ auto pilot mind
> processes as not part of Q-Intellect, that's okay by me. For now, I
> will give you this. Let's see where it takes us. I would have to
> assume, and you can correct me, that this 'non-reflectiveauto
> pilot/sub-conscious and/or unconscious mental processing has to be
> accounted for somewhere, since Pirsig game rules are that everything is
> accounted for in his four levels. This leaves all that mental
> processing as 2nd level biological activities of the individual
> human brain. That's fine. But this seems to make Q-intellect only
> conscious thinking and leaving all un & sub conscious 'thinking' as
> brain process solely. Not something I'm all that fond of but I can go
> along with the program.
>
> [Still Gary:]As you are explaining all maps, SOM & MOQ are a products of
> SOT? are also products of SOLAQI? Since SOLAQI is the equivalent of
> Q-Intellect?
>
> [Scott:] You're misunderstanding here. What I refer to as non-reflective
> thinking is not subconscious or unconscious. It is perfectly conscious,
> just not "mindful". It is the kind of thinking one does when angry at
> someone, the "When he said that I should have responded..." or "I wonder
> what to get for dinner", what Buddhists call monkey-mind. It is not
> reflective, and is generally driven by social or biological issues. The
> intellectual level ("q-intellect"), in my opinion, refers only to
> reflective thinking, which includes what you have to do to properly
> understand a scientific argument, philosophy, and so forth. So no,
> q-intellect is not ALL thinking, just reflective thinking. It produced
> SOM and MOQ, and all other metaphysics.
>
GARY'S RESPONSE: I sent a post to Bo on a similar issue [My post on 7/26/02
at 7:36pm to MD consciousness thread.] The first question is what is
Q-Intellect. This is a two step processes. We Must first come to terms as
to what Pirsig means by this term. This is the rules of the game as laid
out by him in his book Lila. Only after acknowledging these rules can we
start to manipulate them and break them. And when we do we must acknowledge
somehow and somewhere that we are breaking these rules, for the sake of
clarity to all who are reading us. Thus the use of the term SOLAQI is good.
It shows that the user of that term is making a unorthodox Pirsig statement,
they have acknowledged going outside of the rules of the game. SOLAQI is
not Pirsig. It maybe a great idea, it may even be a necessary step in
fulfilling the vision of MOQ, but it is not Pirsig and it is outside of the
rules. [I too have in my essay's and posts gone outside of the Pirsig box,
hopefully I have been clear as to when I was doing so.]
Anyway....
The rules of Pirsig's game is there is only 4 levels with a 5 unstated level
of DQ. That is it. No more! So, what is Q-Intellect? You seem to have
broken the rule when you claim that " intellectual level ("q-intellect"), in
my opinion, refers only to reflective thinking, which includes what you
have to do to properly understand a scientific argument, philosophy, and so
forth. So no, q-intellect is not ALL thinking, just reflective thinking. "
You have just restricted Q-Intellect!!!! You have posited for the sake of
clarity that there exists Q-R Intellect and Q-nonR-Intellect.
[R=reflective] You have made either two levels where there once was only
one, or have divided the one Pirsig level into two parts. Either way can be
acceptable ONLY IF YOU SO DESIGNATE IT AS BEING YOUR INTERPRETATION OF
PIRSIG. You have clearly gone beyond the rules.
If you claim that you have not made two parts or levels of Q-Intellect are
you really claiming that "non-reflective thinking" or "monkey mind" is
actually what ? Social ? Biological? I would say that is absurd. As you
said Q-non R-Intellect thinking "is generally driven by social or
biological issues". A thing maybe driven by something and not be that
thing. Thinking is driven by our biological workings of the brain/nervous
system/body, but it is not solely body process. Thinking is encased in
language and in the rest of our Social heritage, but it is done individually
and not collectively, hence it must be acknowledged as an individual act and
thus Pirsig so designates it with the 4th level Q-Intellect.
I do not see anyway for you but to claim Q-Intellect is either two parts
reflective and non-reflective or to say that there are two levels of
Q-Intellect. Non-reflective thinking is still thinking! It is done
individually.
We can argue later whether this non-reflective thinking is really any
different that sub or un consciousness mental processes/thinking, as in my
essay when I speak of levels of the mind.
Working towards clarity,
Gary
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