From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 21:10:06 BST
Hi Steve
10 Aug. you wrote:
> If intellect is the value of dividing experience into subjects and
> objects then it seems to me that you are making intellect itself a
> pattern of value rather than a type of pattern of value.
I prefer the subjective/objective term and I know no better way of
presenting intellect's value and its departure from social value than
the pre-historic reality versus "modernity" (all in a very extended
sense).
squonk: Intellect values Quality. Intellectual Quality is an aesthetic sense
of harmony among ideas. The ideas themselves do not have to be of subjects and
objects.
Ancient humankind lived in an animated reality, when for
example they watched the night sky lights they saw their myth's gods
and goddesses. There were no questions like: "What are these
phenomena really", "there must be some natural explanation", "are
the myths true or just inventions?".
squonk: Science is an invention based on an aesthetic sense of Quality.
This objective attitude is the intellectual value.
squonk: There are no subjects and objects in the MoQ.
It has a "subjective"
counterpart which (originally) was the social reality it strove to liberate
itself from.
squonk: Maths is subjective because it depends on what you want to do.
However, there are no subjects and objects in the MoQ.
Look to ZMM where the Sophists are presented as
"teachers of virtue" and SOM what replaced that virtue.
squonk: The intellectual pattern that claimed to be able to represent artes
is reason. Reason is not based upon subjects and objects, but on the
intellectual aesthetic of the geometric method of inference. Such truth was felt to be
super sensible like Gods. Later, it was felt to be the form/matter behind
biological, social and intellectual patterns.
The pre-SOM
virtue (=Quality or Value) is naturally Social value of the later MOQ.
squonk: Social excellence values the differentiation of experience into that
which is other, and that which is not other. Without these differentiation's
one cannot recognise authority, which are social patterns, and one cannot
achieve sexual choice.
This MOQ-ZMM superimposition fits like the hand and glove, but -
alas - it has become a principle of this group to disagree with me ;-)
squonk: It has become a principle of your own thinking to mislead yourself.
> I don't think you can have "the value of the S/O divide" as a
> definition of a type of pattern of value, because I don't think there
> are different kinds of value, only different types of patterns of
> value.
...and to turn every stone to find something to object to, like these
subtleties that only you may understand.
squonk: There is only one who understands the SOL interpretation.
> Are you implying that intellectual patterns are patterns of
> intellectual value (patterns of the S/O divide)?
Er ...? Whatever the point, look Steve, A scientist does not sit down at
the bubble chamber of a particle accelerator saying to himself: "Now I
am to perform a S/O patterned experiment", but the search for what is
objectively true in contrast to tradition, supposition, speculations ..etc.
looms behind everything in an intellect-dominated culture. F.ex the
judicial system.
squonk: The scientist is an artist. Artistic creativity is prior to any
differentiation. The products of the scientist are artistic creations of the
intellect. Quantum physics recognises no subjects and objects.
> You seemed to say
> that above and also that social patterns of value are patterns of the
> value of commonality and biological patterns are patterns of the value
> of life. I disagree.
No doubt you do.
> We have biological patterns of value, not
> patterns of biological value. Whenever we say "the value of ____" we
> are really talking about a pattern of value since we are making an
> inference from experience (i.e. inferring a pattern).
I'm not sure if I see the difference. In algebra "the factors' order is
insignificant" (translated. I don't know the English version)
> There aren't different kinds of Quality, there is only Quality
> undivided. There aren't multiple types of Quality in the MOQ.
> Divisions such as static/dynamic (patterned/unpatterned) and the
> different types of patterns are inferences from experience or Quality.
> What would a pattern be without an intellect to recognize/create it?
> The word "pattern" itself implies the observer-observed (S/O divide)
> relationship, so even in our MOQ talk about patterns of value we have
> not escaped S/O completely.
I distinguish between S/O and SOM. The above about the necessity
of (an) intellect for recognition/creation is SOM's idealism. Pirsig
himself pursues this, but in an aside he says that DQ is outside the
observer/observed closed circle. How can that be? Naturally because
the said "necessity" is another somish dead end. Intellect is not
SOM's mind, consciousness, awareness or thinking.
squonk: There are no subjects and objects in the MoQ. There are patterns of
value, and some of these are intellectual patterns. Intellectual patterns are
in a living relationship with DQ, therefore, no one is ever alone.
> To do so we would need a new language.
> Some say we have such a language already in mathematics, but it is
> nearly impossible to apply it in every day life as any of my high
> school students will tell you.
Language once served society as it now serves intellect, and will
surely serve Quality in some far future. As soon as something
becomes "obvious" language adjusts.
squonk: We don't necessarily need a new language. If we change the
philosophical implications behind current definitions, then the new definitions serve
the same purpose.
> I already know that we disagree that they are passed on through
> unconscious copying of behavior, but if you watch a child play and
> "pretend" and consider how social roles are passed on without being
> explicitly taught or explained with a reasoned argument, you'll see my
> point (really Wim's) about unconsciously copied behavior. The forces
> that hold a family together and a nation together are the same type of
> patterns that drive a child to desire playing with a toy as soon as
> his sister picks it up and the same kind of pattern that makes a child
> behave more violently after watching a violent TV show and makes a son
> or daughter imitate their father or mother. Our mimetic "monkey see,
> monkey do" nature is biologically based, but the patterns of behavior
> that are passed on through this sort of learning are not to be found
> encoded in genes, and therefore, constitute a distinctly different
> type of pattern of value.
"Consciousness" is intimately related to "thinking" and "mind" and as I
reject the thinking definition (of intellect) the learning of social skills
may well be "unconscious", what I protest in the ant-like quality it
gives the great cultures of old.
squonk: Ants can stop rivers flowing.
> Intellectual patterns are maintained by people copying one another's
> rationales for behavior. I see a clear and important distinction
> between unconsciously copying and reasoning and explanations of
> experience that I'd like you to try to appreciate.
As in my opening example the "unwillingness" to question the tribal
myths may be called many condescending names, but there are
social-value-dominated cultures to-day and the individuals are as
intelligent as anyone else, it's just that they need the social discipline
as a shore against biological vicissitudes more than they need
freedom of speech and democracy...etc.
squonk: Intelligent as anyone else indeed.
> I think that in
> arguments such as is language or democracy, etc social or
> intellectual, phrasing the argument in terms of either behavior
> patterns or patterns of thought will make the distinction obvious
> though both of these terms (and many many more that I'm sure Jonathan
> will dig up) are Platypi in the MOQ taxonomy and will remain so if we
> don't get more specific by what we mean by, say, democracy as a
> pattern of value.
Well put.
> Intellectual patterns describe the forces that hold an idea together
> as social patterns are those that hold societies together and
> biological patterns hold a living being together and inorganic
> patterns describe the forces that hold matter together.
You accuse me of generalities different from the value itself? ;-)
> These are distinctly different patterns, but there is actually only
> one "force," and that is Quality. The value that makes you jump off
> of a hot stove is the same value that moves you when reading good
> literature though we can infer different types of patterns of quality.
> So, again, I can't see "the value of the S/O divide" as a type of
> value or a type of pattern of value. It is itself an intellectual
> pattern of value.
If you start with the thinking-definition it's plain, but awareness,
consciousness,mind,thinking are all halves of S/O M's eternal divide
and in the MOQ they can't appear "single-handed", only for what they
really are: Mind/matter, aware/unaware ...etc. Very early I found the
likeness between what is described as SOM in ZMM and the intellect
in LILA so irresistible that I arrived at the SOL interpretation.
squonk: SoM is an intellectual pattern of value. As such, it is a symbolic
representation of social value of authority and biological preference (value).
But SoM is not social or biological value. Therefore, SoM in ZMM and the
intellect of Lila are not the same - the intellect of Lila is a DQ-SQ aesthetic
relationship - a code of art.
> Those who are not philosophically inclined are not able to infer any
> intellectual patterns of value at all though they still participate in
> copying patterns of thought and passing them on to others. Lila is
> one of these people. Those philosophically minded folks that do
> "think about thinking" by definition do recognize intellectual
> patterns of value, though they tend to be SOMists which means that
> they are as blind to the intellectual pattern of dividing experience
> into subjects and objects as is the Lila character.
As said to David, Lila B. had no capacity for objective, detached,
deliberations and in that sense she is no "intellectual", but intellectual
values dominate (our) societies so Lila must necessarily observe
them. I find "perceiving intellectual value" a bit impractical.
squonk: Lila B is dominated by biological patterns, to a lesser extent social
patterns, and in a limited way intellectual patterns. These dominant patterns
fluctuate through out the day depending on her activity. When buying a drink,
Lila B is dominated, for a short time, by the intellectual activity of
counting in a logical and systematic way. When conspiring to rip Phaedrus off she is
socially dominated, and very often biologically driven. But she is also
exceptionally unstructured and Dynamic - this looks like illness. There are no
subjects or objects here.
> I also don't think it makes sense to think of the MOQ as a new species
> of value (the value of _?_) since there is only one Quality and
> different types of patterns of value that are inferred from
> experience. In fact "inferring from experience" or pattern making
> itself is another way of describing the highest static level. Since
> the MOQ is a way of "making sense" of reality, it fits perfectly as an
> intellectual pattern of value which in my book includes all such
> patterns of thought.
This last paragraph is important Steve, allow me to return to it.
Bo
squonk: The topology of the MoQ is an aesthetic. Experience is of that which
is aesthetically pleasing. SoM and the skutvik doctrine are aesthetically
displeasing, the later very much so.
squonk
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 12 2003 - 17:16:10 BST