From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 15 2003 - 00:27:59 BST
Hi Scott and Paul,
I was just reading Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, and saw that Kant equates
"moral" and "intelligible": "...we consider ourselves in a moral
(intelligible) world..." So to the extent that intelligence and
intelligible are related (how is that, exactly?) , then an MOI has some
solid backing.
Now, I can see how intelligibility and morality are the same, because
intelligence to me is being able to expect things, and morality is what is
expected. But I wonder how else one could equate them?
Johnny
>From: "Paul Turner" <paulj.turner@ntlworld.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: RE: MD Value of thinking
>Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:23:45 +0100
>
>Hi Scott
>
>Scott:
>Insofar as one considers the intellectual level as static patterns, it
>is
>different from intelligence, which in some way works on static patterns
>(to
>learn them, to create new ones). As mentioned, I think the MOQ could be
>rewritten as an MOI.
>
>Paul:
>OK, but what do we gain from replacing Quality with Intelligence as a
>central mystic reality?
>
> > Paul:
> > This seems to lead to the philosophy of idealism. In the MOQ, and in
>the
> > Mahayanistic Buddhism of Nagarjuna, both the "material" and the
> > "immaterial" are further reduced to something fundamental to both and
> > without conceptual distinction. As I recall Barfield, he doesn't make
> > the step into metaphysics (he isn't concerned with the fundamental
> > nature of reality) but is content with an explanation of consciousness
> > and perception. Have you extended Barfield's thought into a
>metaphysics?
>
>Scott:
>Barfield's metaphysics appears to be the same as Coleridge's, which he
>outlines sympathetically in "What Coleridge Thought" (and with which I
>am
>also sympathetic). In any case, there is ontology and epistemology
>implied
>and scattered throughout "Saving the Appearances", even if it is not
>systematized as such.
>
>Paul:
>OK
>
>Scott:
>Also, he doesn't explain consciousness so much as
>chart its evolution. One can call it idealism if one wants to
>distinguish it
>from materialism or dualism, but a better word would be monism, in much
>the
>same way as is the MOQ. To put clothes on this would take quite a while.
>Perhaps it can be hinted at by saying that on analysis, the material is
>seen
>to be ideal, and the ideal is seen as material. In the end, one gets to
>Buddhism: nirvana is samsara, form is not other than emptiness, and
>emptiness is not other than form.
>
>Paul:
>That would bring it in line with the MOQ, if that is the aim.
>
> > Paul:
> > I would say that the intellectual level put one together based on a
> > pre-intellectual aesthetic evaluation of alternatives.
>
>Scott:
>Where did the pre-intellectual aesthetic evaluation of alternatives come
>from?
>
>Paul:
>Dynamic Quality.
>
>Scott:
>I think my capital-I Intelligence is just another name for that.
>
>Paul:
>Yes, but why is it better to give it another name?
>
> > Paul:
> > Yes, inorganic nature is actually postulated and confirmed by a
> > correspondence to the deduced consequences of a hypothesis, but I
>would
> > say that sensation is empirical and immediately apprehended, but of an
> > aesthetic nature, that is, value differentiates the experience, not
> > "things-in-themselves".
>
>Scott:
>I would phrase it more as the value and inherent conceptual structure of
>what we perceive through our senses is what makes it that we see the
>same
>things.
>
>Paul:
>Pirsig's explanation denies an inherent conceptual structure, to use a
>recently used passage again:
>
>"What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that
>this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the
>communications that we have with other men we receive from them
>ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not
>come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their
>harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these
>reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may
>infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus
>it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this
>quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can
>ever know" ZMM Ch22
>
>Which is why I think that Quality provides a better term for fundamental
>reality than Intelligence.
>
>Scott:
>However, that value and conceptual structure includes more than what
>we see. Or rather, what we see is that value and conceptual structure
>projected into spacetime. Quantum mechanics makes this pretty clear.
>Particles and waves are two different projections into spacetime of
>something that can't be confined to spacetime measures.
>
>Paul:
>Yes, the projection into "spacetime" is a harmonious conceptual
>organisation of experience. However, remember that particles and waves
>are two deduced entities which explain different patterns of data; they
>have never been empirically experienced.
>
> > Paul:
> > Not aimed at your or anyone in particular but I think the use of "S/O"
> > is ambiguous and used too freely. It can mean at least three things:
> >
> > 1. Metaphysical "subject-object" distinction
> >
> > 2. Epistemological "subjective vs objective" distinction
> >
> > 3. I/Other distinction
>
>Scott:
>True, and opposed to Squonk, I think we need all these meanings if we
>are
>going to have a metaphysics that includes our current reality. We can
>recognize that the metaphysical S/O distinction is not fundamental, but
>at
>the same time we have to acknowledge that experience comes to us in S/O
>form
>(#3).
>
>Paul:
>In the MOQ, experience (as synonymous with Quality) is undivided, any
>intellectual distinctions logically come after; thus I think it is more
>a matter of common sense that "experience comes to us in S/O form"
>rather than an empirical experience.
>
> > Paul:
> > The something labelled "experience" is Dynamic Quality, the conceptual
> > organization and explanation becomes static quality. Part of that
> > explanation is the postulated "object" (inorganic-biological) and
> > postulated "self" (social-intellectual).
>
>Scott:
>I disagree. Experience is the polaric interaction of DQ and SQ.
>
>Paul:
>I think that experience is Quality differentiating into Dynamic Quality
>as the pre-intellectual immediately apprehended cutting edge and static
>quality as the distinguishable universe of sensation, thought and
>response - with a scale of awareness between the two aspects, the
>polarity of which may be termed as "tension".
>
>Scott:
>Conceptualizing is another polaric interaction of DQ and SQ. By
>"polaric" I
>am referring to Coleridge's Law of Polarity, as I remarked in a recent
>post
>to Platt. Roughly, Coleridge's central metaphysical concept is that of
>"two
>forces of one power", which forces he calls "free life" and "confining
>form". Without SQ, DQ would instantly expand infinitely, producing only
>chaos, which is not experience.
>
>Paul:
>Without static quality there is undifferentiated experience but not
>necessarily "chaotic", whereas I think chaos must be a form of
>experience. Let me think some more about this.
>
> > Scott:
> > 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.
> >
> > Paul:
> > But not a S/O metaphysical form? I think that the value of thinking
> > may be " / ", that is "the value of differentiation".
>
>Scott:
>Doesn't a cell differentiate between food and non-food?
>
>Paul:
>I don't know, does it carry around an idea of "food"? Remember that the
>"cell" and "food" are differentiated by intellectual patterns first and
>superimposed on our "observation" of the "cell".
>
>Scott:
>I see the value of thinking as the ability to hold on to
>differentiation, and so question it, and build explanations for it.
>
>Paul:
>That sounds good.
>
> > Paul:
> > The MOQ says that aesthetic experience creates ideas which create
> > explanations of experience, which includes things like "objects".
>
>Scott:
>Except that one perceives an object as an object -- something isolated
>--
>before one has an explanation.
>
>Paul:
>I would say that an "object" is part of the explanation. By
>"explanation" here I mean something closer to perception which
>intellectual patterns provide without awareness, not necessarily a
>deliberate and conscious verbal or written explanation. They are
>happening all the time, and you can become more aware of the process
>with closer attention. Deliberate perceptual tricks can highlight the
>process too.
>
>In Lila's Child p505, Pirsig and Dan Glover are discussing intellectual
>patterns as being "a rational voice inside our heads", Pirsig states:
>
>"It seems loudest [the rational voice - static intellectual patterns]
>when new things are happening that need explanation. Soto Zen meditation
>is a carefully contrived situation where as little as possible is
>happening and this rational voice tends to run down like an alarm clock
>that nobody is winding. When it stops completely enlightenment can
>happen." [My brackets]
>
>This is what I mean by "explanation" in the sense that I have used it
>above.
>
>Cheers
>
>Paul
>
>
>
>
>
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