Calling All Moqers, Jonathan, Wavedave and Marco by name.
June is drawing to a close and this month's topic - the intellectual
level of the MOQ - has been cut, quartered and drawn, but have we
reached anything like an agreement about it? Well, I spot a general
dividing line through this group, between the mind-intellectuals and
the SOL-intellectuals. To act the Roger part I ask for a stand (and
be counted) here. I also have to act my part as a Don Quijote who
sees attacking knights in every windmill he passes, but who are
the mind-intellectuals as identify them? I start with
JONATHAN ho wrote:
> And yet, Pirsig himself says that DQ = preintellectual reality and
> SQ = intellectualised reality.
I guess this is from ZAMM and the problem starts when one mixes
its pre-moq formulations with the post-moq LILA ones. For instance
can it just as correctly be said that DQ = preinorganic, preorganic
or presocial. The same goes for SQ. All right, we are discussing
intellect right now, but intellect does not pop up from nowhere.
Pirsig insists that it is out of the social level.
> I then went on with quotes from ZAMM and Lila (e.g. the "hot
>stove" discussion) where Pirsig makes it clear that he regards the
> identifiable patterns that characterize our reality as
> INTELLECTUALIZATIONS. Pirsig's levels are all
>intellectualizations - into inorganic, biological, social patterns. . . .
>My reservations remain about having the Intellect itself as a
>separate "level" (see archive).
Again the world as mind ("Die Welt als Vorstellung" as
Schopenhauer said). "Intellectualizations" in capital letters and
meaning the same as in subject-object metaphysics: abstractions
in contrast to the "real thing". And as it is Pirsig who says it it's
correct.....or? He has said that he regard the intellect as equal to
mind, but I have found many places where he seem to support the
SOL-intellect so it's not all that clear.
> -- --------------- Another theme I want to return to is the one of
> INTELLECT AS PLANNING. IMHO, most of human development
>occurred historically by a process of evolution. Incremental
>changes in behaviours and institutions appeared randomly, and
>the favourable ones were selected. However, the short timespan
>of recorded history reveals a new process whereby man learned
>to harness his powers of extrapolation to PLAN things. This new
>force for change gathered pace in the industrial revolution and
>became a dominant force during
> the Victorian age, with the emergence of town planning, transport
> policy, health management, public education etc. etc. However,
>the Victorians hypocritically persisted with pre-existing
>(unplanned) social values that were unable to adapt to the pace of
>change. The hypocrisy is clearly shown by the Victorian attitudes
>to religion and also to human rights.
I have no reservations about intellect as planning, but it merely
reaches a new high at the intellectual level. When a dog buries a
bone it "plans" at the biological level - unless one resorts to the
arch-SOM "instinct" nonsense. ěPlanningî continues through the
social level, but at the intellectual level it gets an added (subject)
/objective quality; seeing the future as reality. So that supports
the SOL-intellect just as much.
> Pirsig marks the end of WW1 as the beginning of the intellectual
> age. While I believe that intellect (planning) became a dominant
> force earlier, I do recognise that the WW1 disaster clearly
>marked the complete failure of Victorian social values. Thus I
>agree with Pirsig's marking of 1918 as a landmark date.
I agree to this.
......................................................................
WAVEDAVE is another mind-intellectual in my opinion. He wrote:
> And as Johnathan repeated in his last post even people who have
>been here since the start refuse to look at and consider past
>arguments and will reject direct quotes of Pirsig that do not fit
>neatly within the PoV their expressing at the time, all while
>claiming defence of "the MoQ."
Guess who? :-)
> Another theme I want to return to is the one of INTELLECT AS
> PLANNING.
> Just as I finished this post and went online send it and your
> "PLANNING" post arrived. Guess I could retitle it INTELLECT BY
> DESIGN. ************************** Possibly my design experience
> makes it easier to understand this difference between REALITY
>and patterns of REALITY. And the utility of this approach. This
> statement from one of my old design theory textbooks may help
> illustrate :
> "Is designing an art, a science, or a form of mathematics?"
> " The view put forward here is that designing should not be
>confused with art, with science, or with mathematics. It is a
>hybrid activity which depends, for it successful execution, upon a
>proper blending of all three and is most unlikely to succeed if it is
>exclusively identified with any one. The main point of difference is
>that of TIMING. Both artists and scientists operate on the
>physical world as it exists in the PRESENT (whether it is real or
>symbolic), while mathematicians operate on abstract
>relationships that are independent of historical TIME. Designers,
>on the other hand, are forever bound to treat as real that which
>exists only in the imagined FUTURE and to specify ways in which
>the FORESEEN thing can be made to exist." J. Christopher
>Jones -"Design Methods-seeds of human future" Wiley 1970
>[emphasis by author]
As said to Jonathan I don't object to intellect as "planning" at a
new and advanced stage: Foreseeing/objectivizing a future(and a
past). But your point seems to be that design is something
special that requires a mind-intellect.
> So Dynamic Quality is always the cutting edge of the PRESENT
>and in the wake of this cutting edge, the PAST, are all these
>static patterns of value. As one participates in the design our
>reality (which I believe we do) we are forever bound to treat as
>real, these STATIC PATTERNS OF QUALITY, intellectual
>qualities, which exist in the PAST, so that we can specify ways
>in which FORESEEN things can be made to exist in the
>imagined FUTURE.
> In order to do this we must construct:
> First, intellectual patterns of value, an intellect.
> Followed very closely by:
You seem to mean that first a mental space is created and
then slowly filled with intellectual patterns that fight for
"lebensraum" within this vessel. Finally there appears a high
pattern (SOM) that sees the lower levels as an external world and
itself as mind? Yes, but this high pattern ALONE is the Q-intellect!
It is no mind realm where imagination takes place, it is the
mind/matter, imagination/non-imagination division itself.
>From that quality everything you wish to attribute to the intellectual
level of the MOQ springs. Even the MOQ itself, but logically it
cannot be contained by Intellect and will become the "machine
code" of a new pattern that ....goes off on a purpose of its own.
> ".. one of the highest quality intellectual patterns there is...
> ...the intellectual pattern that says "there is an external world
> of things out there which are independent of intellectual
> patterns".
Yes, this is Pirsig, but again the unholy SOM/MOQ mix. The
highest patter of Q-Intellect sounds like SOM, but SOM says: ...an
external world of things independent of MIND, while "intellectual
patterns" are of MOQ origin! Unless one equalize mind and intellect
and gets all the confusion and impossibilities of SOM back in
force.
> And when we do that we find that......"in this highest quality
> intellectual pattern, external objects appear historically before
> intellectual patterns...
The SOL-intellect rids us of all these mind-boggling effects.
>But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself MUST and
>DOES come before the external world, not after,..."
After Pirsig's enormous effort of discarding the subject-object
metaphysics and its mind-matter, internal-external ...da-dum
offshoots. Why bring it back again is beyond me. ......but it
does nor diminish my admiration one iota.
> as it does in every human child between birth and walking age.
Whose words are these? :-)
> Why?
>Because, the intellect, or intellectual level, is the medium which
>evaluates, orders, conveys, communicates, reconciles, and
>archives static patterns of value.
It does so ....by straigt-jacketing experience to fit its SO-form.
> So without intellect and this "reject" high
> quality intellectual pattern the rest of the MoQ could not be
> designed, let alone built.
The "reject" effect is a result of the MOQ being something that
can't be contained by he SOL-intellect. The latter will necessarily
become the target for a new inter-level struggle, but you are right
about its importance for the MOQ design and building.
......................................................................
MARCO is a bordercase regarding the SOL-intellect. He
understands it but fears the "struggle" I speak of above. That the
Intellect-Biology axis that Pirsig speaks about in LILA will repeat
itself in a 5th.level-Society plot against intellect. This is a deep
moqian-founded insight, but let me not claim Marco as a
SOList because he wrote:
> I will continue my last post, trying to show that SOM is not the
> only possible expression of q-intellect, yet predominant. But
> firstly, for who is interested, some answers for Bo and 3WDave,
>and a short comment on Cory's post.
I will only concentrate on the "mind-intellect vs sol-intellect"
relevant parts. You have possibly noticed my effort to "smoke out"
Jonathan and Wavedave so that we - before June's over - at least
can reach an agreement on what our disagreement is. So now I'll
try to provoke you too ;-).
> on lunedi 12 giugno 2000 Bo wrote:
Thanks for the Italian crash-course. 'Lunedi', 'giugno', 'martedi',
'maggio' (DeMaggio!= Of May?)....etc. is now part of our
vocabulary.
> The only difference seems to be the term "human" (but who else
> is experiencing? ) and in fact I had bracketed that term. You
>write "q-nerves" to mean your "human" reaction to my words. My
>fault is maybe that I'm not so used to put a "q-" before every
>word... Is it better if I write: " levels of q-human experience", or do
>you prefer "levels of q-human q-experience" ? :-)
I become a little wary every time the "human" term is used in what
I take to be a mind sense.You bracketed it and I possibly just
looked for something to pick on, but now you use the ..."who else
is experiencing" (in brackets) and IT indicate the same everything-
in-the-human-mind notion which grates my Q-nerves just as much.
As long as "human" indicates the SO mind/matter intellectual level
(for me), my MOQ means something slightly off-intellect. Per now,
but will become fully integrated in the "human"development in the
future.
> Here I call "static filters" the same static patterns the q-human
> being is composed by. I don't agree with your " 'Human' in >
>moqian at most indicates Q-intellect": what is after all this q-
>human being, who is able to experience reality and create
>intellectual static patterns to explain and communicate this
>experience?
Human beings share the value levels with all existence up to
Intellect and there is communication before ěexplanationî - each
level is communication of that levelís values - and there is even
lingvistic communication before Intellect. I spot in this your
formulation that Intellect is where experience becomes (self-
conscious), but it is merely a continuation of the static formation
You had this great insight of the level building and "machine
codes", but nothing can code itself free of the "consciousnessî-
intellect Itís a dead end..
> In conclusion I mean that it's not so bad to talk about a
> "subjective" experience if it's clear that this subject is not a
> lonely awareness in a world of objects, at the contrary it's a
> stratified complexity of the same static qualities that are
> compounding at the same time all "q-subjects" and "q-objects".
Right. Here you make Q-sense. No, it's not bad at all to use the
SOL-intellect. It is an advanced value stage if one has the higher
MOQ view about it in mind (!). However, your previous "human"
statements very much indicates the lonely "aware" mind.
>From 'lunedi' the coming we will be heading by car in the direction
of Denmark - the M–n island. My wife wants me to leave the
portable behind so it will be tough, but useful ....possibly. But
before that it will been interesting to see if this our go at Intellect
will bring results.
Thanks for your patience ....and write soon everyone.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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