From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Aug 12 2003 - 00:41:14 BST
Paul,
> Scott:
> I think Pirsig falls into a SOM trap here. That is a view that
> presupposes
> that there was no intellect until brains developed to produce it.
> Intellect
> produced the brain so it can work in physical reality. No, I can't prove
> this, but I take it as a more useful myth than the Darwinian one.
>
> Paul:
> I'm interested by this Scott, please explain:
>
> "Intellect produced the brain" as in the "idea" of a "brain" did not
> exist until the intellect invented it?
>
> Or
>
> "Intellect produced the brain" as in Dynamic Quality created the brain
> and you equate DQ with intellect?
>
> Or
>
> Another explanation?
As in, in the MOQ, Quality is the source of everything. This is an
immaterial source of such material things as brains. In my view, one could
redo the MOQ giving Intelligence (or, as Coleridge does, Reason, or, as John
the Evangelist does, the Logos) as the source of everything. Not there are
two conflicting sources, but at that rarified level, Quality is Intelligence
is Love is Wisdom, etc.
So my statement is merely to say that the material comes from the
immaterial, and the immaterial is "of the same nature" as our mind. To be
physical beings we need a brain to coordinate all the subatomic (and other
immaterial) goings-on into a nice 4-dimensional spacetime picture that we
call "physical reality". So Intelligence put one together. As always,
consider this kind of talk mythical. For some philosophical justification,
consider that everything that we sense is produced by our minds (not that
there isn't anything independent of our selves, but that its form, color,
etc. are so produced. We don't see photons or hear air vibrations, etc.).
The "material" is usually taken to be "sense-perceptible", and the
"sense-perceptible" is a mental creation, so what I am saying is just
drawing out the consequences.
>
> Scott:
> I disagree. Again, I see this as a SOM viewpoint: there is objective
> experience to be explained by the subject. This is the current value of
> S/O
> thinking, as Bo says, but not basic.
>
> Paul:
> You have made the assumption that experience = experiencing subject of
> an experienced object. There is no need to make this assumption, such
> divisions come after the empirically experienced value and may form the
> conceptual arrangement of the form "S/O" or may not, I don't see the
> necessity. As such, I fail to see how this is a SOM viewpoint.
I erred in saying "SOM viewpoint", and should have said "S/O viewpoint". You
said: " I think the basic value of thinking is the conceptual organisation
and explanation of experience." You are setting something labelled
"experience" against its "conceptual organization and explanation". That
language/reality distinction is what I was referring to as being an S/O
viewpoint. I would also say it is unavoidable unless and until we evolve
further.
>
> Scott:
> Basically, I would say that the value
> of thinking, like everything else, is creativity for its own sake.
>
> Paul:
> When you say - "that the value of thinking, like everything else, is
> creativity for its own sake" are you not offering an explanation of the
> experience of intellectual patterns?
Yes. It is also in an S/O form. I don't disagree with the idea that there
are explanations, nor that an explanation cannot be a creation. Only with
the notion that explanations can escape S/O thinking.
>
> With no conceptual organisation of experience there are no explanations,
> with no explanations there is no prediction, with no prediction there is
> no science, with no science there is no technology, with no technology
> there is no internet, with no internet there is no on-line discussion
> group to discuss the MOQ, with no on-line discussion group we wouldn't
> be having this discussion about what the value of the intellectual level
> is.
>
> My experience right now is explained very well by saying that we are
> having this discussion. I guess the question is - are "concepts" and
> "ideas" a side effect of "creativity for its own sake"? Is this all an
> illusory consequence of creativity?
All true. But also all S/O. Yes, Intelligence (see above -- replace it with
Quality if desired) has evolved us to the point where most all our
experience and most all our intellect is in S/O form, and so that is the
form for our creativity. We can -- thanks to thinkers like Pirsig, Barfield,
Coleridge and others -- figure out that this S/O form is not basic, but it
takes something more than our S/O thinking to move beyond it. What SOM says
is that the concepts and ideas derive -- are abstractions -- from what the
concepts and ideas are about. What I (following Barfield following Coleridge
following...Plato, with modifications) am suggesting is that some rarified
version of those concepts and ideas creates the experience in the first
place.
>
> Just thinking out loud :-)
>
As are we all,
- Scott
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