RE: MD Forked tongue

From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Fri Aug 29 2003 - 17:07:22 BST

  • Next message: ERIN NOONAN: "Re: RE: MD economics of want and greed 4"

    Platt,

    Two to tango ?
    You are still describing two different things at each end of an interaction.
    You still use the word "between". Between "somethings" ? You are simply
    using different metaphors to avoid using the words subject and object, but
    we don't actually have any fundamentally different model here IMHO. MoQ
    focusses on the interaction (or the triplet) rather than any distinct
    subjects or objects, but I don't believe it helps to pretend there's nothing
    involved in the interaction whatever you call these things - Two to tango
    you say. Three to tango I could say. (Aphorisms rule by the way.)

    Quote from Lila ?
    I already said they were "familiar words" - I take it for granted we're all
    familiar with the texts of ZMM, Lila, SODV and LC. I still don't see what
    this is telling me about your argument. Sorry.

    A world of flukes ?
    I know it's amazing isn't it. Awesome. Difficult to imagine. All of those
    things, but no reason why it may not be true, and lots of reasons to say it
    fits the evidence. Try reading "Climbing Mount Improbable".

    Transcendental purpose ?
    I choose my words carefully I hope, because I have no wish to offend anyone
    who feels the need to believe in such a thing. I'm simply agnostic on this
    point.

    Could you point me at any specific Pirsig quote that
    MoQ itself claims to "drive towards betterness".

    Ian

    -----Original Message-----
    From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
    [mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of Platt Holden
    Sent: 29 August 2003 16:08
    To: moq_discuss@moq.org
    Subject: RE: MD Forked tongue

    Ian:

    > Sorry Platt, but I just do not see where you get those distinctions you
    > say I seem to be making ??? On each of your points I believe I see
    > exactly the opposite.
    >
    > You said
    > Subject/Object view.
    > Humans apart from the world ?
    >
    > I said no such thing.
    > On the contrary - I say there is no world to speak of independent of our
    > interaction with it, and it with us (in every sense, mental and
    > physical) This interaction is the quality we know.

    It takes two to tango and at least two to have an "interaction." Your
    two are "us" and the "world," translates into self/other, man/nature,
    in other words, your basic subject/object division. The "quality we
    know," that is, the quality we can talk about, is not the interaction
    between us and the world out there, but interaction between direct
    experience (DQ) and our static intellectual patterns of value (static
    quality).

    > You said
    > betterness is a value judgment that is immediately
    > apprehended by direct experience prior to "making sense."
    > Recognition of Quality is pre-intellectual
    >
    > I say I've seen those phrases before, but I haven't a clue what
    > distinction your making. I guess your words "direct experience" are
    > analogous to my "interaction" above. But "immediate", "prior", "pre-"
    > you lose me.

    Perhaps this will help. From Chap. 9, Lila:

    "Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of realty, the
    source of all things, completely simple and always new. It was the
    moral force that had motivated the brujo in Zuni. It contains no
    pattern of fixed rewards and punishments. Its only perceived good is
    freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality itself--any
    pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and kill the
    ongoing free force of life."

    > You said
    > denying that the world has no purpose
    >
    > I say (I suspect you have an unintended double negative there) I do not
    > deny the world a purpose, I just can't imagine what that might mean, nor
    > can I see any reason for it to have such a purpose in order to explain
    > anything I need to understand about the world - so far anyway. I said
    > "no evidence the world needs any transcendental purpose" ie it may or
    > may not have a purpose - I can't see what difference it makes, so I
    > doubt (rather than deny) there is such a purpose.

    A world without purpose means a world of flukes. Humans are flukes on a
    fluke of a planet in a fluke of a galaxy in a fluke of a universe.
    That's the inspiring view that subject/object science has left us with.

    If on the other hand, in the nature of things, there is a purpose
    expressed as a drive towards goodness as the MOQ claims, then our moral
    systems will derive their validity from this. If not, then morals must
    be our own inventions and thus wholly relative. That's the prevailing
    belief today among intellectual elites, and why intellectual control of
    society has failed so abysmally, as evidenced at the sorry state of
    U.S. public education and the garbage comprising popular culture.

    So, transcendental purpose makes a big difference.

    Platt

    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

    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 : Fri Aug 29 2003 - 17:14:20 BST