From: David M (davidint@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: Thu Nov 03 2005 - 18:38:10 GMT
Hi Scott
I find that generally convincing and quite in line with my own thoughts.
A couple of problems/questions:
Is there a danger that if we place feelings on the static and objectifiable
side we may be accused of just being nihilists? Does this undermine
values? Does itmean that we we cometo make choices from what is
possible we have no basis to choose one possibility over another?
You also see final participation as being individual? But do we not also
expect greater freedom at this more advanced stage? The individual remains
dependent on nature, society, culture, etc to become an individual. Is there
not
a need for the fulfilment of democracy for the true posiibilities of the
individual
to be realised?
I think we also need to think about the status of the possibiliites that we
are presented with. These evolve. Seems to me that being human is to
be have more possibilities than a rock or a dog. Is there not a sense in
which we are dependent on DQ to provide the possibilities from which we
(as Plato's Demiurge you might say) select the SQ that enters this cosmos?
Regards
David Morey
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Roberts" <jse885@localnet.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: MD Quality, subjectivity and the 4th level
> Mike, Bo, et al
>
> This is mostly in response to Mike's initial post in this thread, but let
> me
> start here:
>
> Bo said:
> I too find Barfield's "participation" model most apt (Scott naturally
> doesn't like him to become part of the MOQ)...
>
> Scott:
> I hold that if one accepts Barfield's thesis, then the MOQ has to be
> modified, and the way it has to be modified is how it characterizes the
> fourth level, and, related to that, in how it characterizes intellect. In
> the first place, the fourth level is not the birth of the intellect, but
> the
> movement of intellect from outside to inside. But even that is seeing it
> from our modernist point of view -- prior to this movement, there wasn't
> an
> inside, and so it is correct to say, a la SOL, that the fourth level
> coincides with the S/O divide (but whether that is S/O[1] and S/O[2] has
> to
> be dealt with -- see below). So the first thing to note is that intellect
> existed prior to the fourth level. Odysseus was not a genius. Rather the
> genius of Athena worked through him, and that is still what 'genius' meant
> until the modern age (after about 1500 CE). So here I agree with Mike's
> answer to Ham: the S/O divide is in some sense fundamental to the fourth
> level, but it is not absolutely fundamental. Barfield shows how it came to
> be as an evolution of consciousness, which implies that further evolution
> of
> consciousness may move us beyond it. And indeed, Barfield calls this
> further
> evolution moving to the state of "final participation". (As an aside,
> Barfield in his preface to the second edition of "Saving the Appearances"
> makes clear that this is not some Absolutely Final state, just the end of
> this adventure into S/O -- what happens after that who knows.)
>
> So in response to Mike's question about whether intellect is necessarily
> subjective, I would say no.One might say that it is for us (stuck in the
> fourth level as we are), but Barfield has something to say on this as
> well.
> Insofar as one might speak of an individual at the third level (there was
> at
> least awareness of a body), it is only with the fourth level that one has,
> in Sam's phrase, autonomous individuals, where, as Mike said to Ham, one
> has
> "my" thoughts, rather than Athena's. However, autonomy is, with us, only
> partial, which is to say, we have some control, but not complete control.
> We
> are still, in spite of 2500 years of admonishment, still to some extent,
> often to a very large extent, at the mercy of our passions and our
> unexamined beliefs. (Here the MOQ is spot on: those calls for
> "spontaneity"
> among many hippies and New Age types are as likely as not a fall back into
> the social or biological -- intellectual spontaneity is another matter.)
> What Barfield says (following Rudolf Steiner) is that the movement from
> our
> current state to final participation is our own responsibility, and that
> the
> means to do this is through strengthening our autonomy, which means
> strengthening our intellect. As I see it, this is what meditation is
> about:
> disciplining our intellect so that it is not directed by existing SQ --
> fostering detachment, in other words. (Another aside: this does NOT mean
> that I think intellect can understand the mystical. But the whole relation
> between this view of intellect and the mystical is more than I want to go
> into now.)
>
> A perfectly detached intellect, I think, would not be subjective. The
> sense
> of self arises when our will, including our intellectual will (e.g.,
> trying
> to solve puzzles), gets frustrated. In pre-intellectual days, this
> wouldn't
> happen, since people didn't think of themselves as autonomous at all. So
> we
> are in an in-between state, neither wholly controlled nor wholly
> autonomous,
> and that is why from the beginning of the fourth level there has been the
> stress on isolating the intellect from the passions. So, as to whether we
> are talking about S/O[1] or [2], I would say, both. S[1] includes the
> passions (feeling and will), but nobody thought to make a metaphysics out
> of
> it until the last perception of what we now call subjectivity was driven
> out
> of nature (after 1500 CE). But from the outset, there was the admonishment
> to
> establish the S/O[2] divide, which is to say that freedom arises by
> learning
> to treat all actual objects of thought as objects (not self). For example,
> to uncover and question all beliefs, to avoid using feelings as
> justification for actions, and so on. In "dynamic/static" terms, this
> would
> amount to freeing the intellect from all static bounds, which is to say,
> dynamic intellect is "pure" intellect (completely detached from all SQ).
>
> Hence, this is why I see self-transformation as being a matter of working
> on
> our intellect, rather than trying to move beyond it. And this is my
> difference with SOL: while the SOL says that intellect is the S/O divide,
> I
> (following Barfield), say that intellect was before the S/O divide and
> will
> be after it is overcome. Mathematics is a case in our current experience
> of
> intellect with no S/O divide.
>
> Finally, on the intellect/intelligence distinction, I see none. When a
> materialist speaks of "nature's intelligence" s/he is speaking somewhat
> tongue-in-cheek, and I think the same can be said of the way Bo speaks of
> it. As I see it, to say of some process that it is intelligent is
> meaningless unless there is value involved, and to say there is value
> involved is meaningless unless there is awareness involved, and a process
> that involves choosing among possibilities based on estimating
> consequences.
> That is, there is intellect involved.
>
> - Scott
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <skutvik@online.no>
> To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
> Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 11:03 AM
> Subject: Re: MD Quality, subjectivity and the 4th level
>
>
> Mike and David M. (Scott mentioned)
>
> 30 Oct. you wrote:
>
>> I'd like to recap some of the suggestions floating about on the MD
>> recently. Scott's been insisting that the thinking intellect is both
>> static and dynamic - that thinking can be a synonym of Quality. Bo,
>> meanwhile, insists on a sharp divide between "intellect" and
>> "intelligence", where "intellect" should only be used to describe the
>> peculiar brand of intelligence or thinking that has arisen with the
>> subject/object divide. Gav made the interesting suggestion that
>> intelligence, under Bo's dichotomy, could be the synonym for Quality.
>
> This suggestion from Gav has passed me by, but I don't see
> intelligence=Quality. Even the inorganic is a Quality level and so
> is the biological, and life's first manifestation were bare minimum
> without the neural network, that I see as intelligence's source.
>
> <remainder skipped to keep this to a reasonable length>
>
>
>
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