Jonathan, Bo, Dan, et all
The metaphorical scrimmage continues.....
Jonathan
> Maybe I'm being dense here, but I don't see how something abstract can
> be anything other than metaphorical.
Bo
> This month’s topic hasn’t exactly turned people
> on and after reading Jonathan’s latest I believed that he had
> succeeded in leading everyone astray, but there are a few who
> understand. As usual it is the Intellectual level which is the acid
> test of the MOQ....The subject-object metaphysics will haunt the MOQ forever if not
the “mind” notion of Q-Intellect is done away with,
Pirsig
> To prevent confusion, the MOQ treats ‘mind’ as the exact equivalent of ‘static
> intellectual patterns’ and avoids use of the term when possible.”
Jonathan
> > Intellect=Mind, ....involved in every manifestation of Static
> > Patterns from PREINTELLECTUAL reality (DQ).
>
> > Thus, intellect involves ALL patterns of all levels.
Bo
> Hamish Muirhead has presented an alternative static sequence with no
> Intellectual level, and I agree whole-heartedly. If Intellect is
> equalized with SOM’s “mind” there is no such level at all.
Which lead us right back to 12/9/98 Jonathan:
> Now, a big question - does the 3-level cake "leave anything out"? I
> would argue that all the what we have till now regarded as "intellectual
> values" are in fact social patterns e.g. individual freedom, free
> speech, justice, logic, science.
> DONNY has made several illuminating contributions explaining how our
> whole system of logic is (merely) social convention.
> With the 3-level cake, we have no problem in explaining any behaviour,
> be it of molecules, humans or social groups.
> Intelligence and thinking fall nicely into the biological (individual
> intelligence) and social (collective intelligence) realms. NOTHING IS
> LEFT OUT.
3WD
Why would people on opposite sides of the issue and for vastly different
reasons want to drop the highest, most evolved level, of the MoQ, which
Pirsig called the Intellect? Sounds irrational. Which is the point, we
are and can be irrational so that even in the face of overwhelming
experiencial evidence to the contrary we will tie ourselves in
intellectual knots avoiding the obvious. Zeno's paradox is the classic
example. What Zeno (and James,Bergson,Pirsig, and others) was sceptical
of was not logic,and not experience, but of man's propensity for
irrationality when trying to reconcile the two.
What we have here is what Pirsig, and his declared predecessor
James, decried as "intellectualism" or "vicious intellectualism" and
this is why a distinct catagory, or kind, or type, or level of values
such as Intellect is necessary.That reason is to define, understand, or
know the practical uses and limits of Intellect and its relationship
with experience and thus reality.
The source of the Intellect's great power and also its weakness is that
it deals in abstractions from a highly filtered and selected segment of
experience. Those of you familar with James work in psychology, and your
own experience will verify, that the sheer volume of sensible
information provided at any instant is so large that to order and use it
we employ some kind of faculties by a process
he calls "attention" (we select only some small part of the total
experience "stream" at any given time) and "abstraction" (convert by a
complexed, but not
completely known process, that small part into abstractions, words,
symbols, patterns of value) which then coupled with memorized
abstractions we sort, order, and act on. Sometimes at incredible speeds,
sometimes over eons. In James discussion of Bergson in " A Pluralistic
Universe" he puts it this way:
"Sensible reality is too concrete to be entirely manageable -look at the
narrow range of it which is all that any animal, living in it
exclusively as he does, is able to compass. To get from one point in it
to another we have to plough or wade though the whole intolerable
interval. No detail is spared us;... we [would] grow old and die in the
process. But with our faculty of abstracting and fixing concepts we
are there in a second, almost as if we controlled the fourth dimension,
skipping the intermediaries as by a divine winged power, and getting to
the exact point we require without entanglement with any context. What
we do in fact is to harness up reality in our conceptual systems in
order to drive it better. This process is practical because all the
termini to which we drive are particular temini, when they are facts of
the mental order. But the sciences in which the conceptual method
chiefly celebrates it triumphs are those of space and time, where the
transformations of external things are dealt with.
To deal with moral facts conceptually, we first have to transform them, substitute
brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests as
mechanical forces, our conscious 'selves' as 'streams' and the like.
Paradoxical effect!... if our intellectual life were not practical but
destined to reveal the inner natures.... We know the inner movements of
our spirit only perceptually. We feel them live in us, but can give no
distinct account of their elements, nor definitely predict their future;
while things that lie along the world of space and time, things of the
sort we literally handle, are what our intellects cope with most
sucessfully. Does this not confirm us in the view that the original and
still surviving function of our intellectual life is to guide us in the
practical adaptation of our expectancies and activities?"
So Jonathan, James, Lakoff and others agree that the metaphor is a
powerful abstraction tool, a powerful way of understanding something,
but I think we all agree if we mistake this understanding for the"thing"
we end up back at "idealism" and probably of the "absolute" variety.
"The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind." Lila pg. 114
Of course this value and the subsequent thoughts, mind, and reality are
just metaphoric abstractions!
3WD
PS
If you want to read a discussion that , in my opinion , clear up this
whole issue I would suggest reading James footnote 50 defending Bergson
on page 570 of "The Writings of William James-A Comprehesive Edition"
Alas it is two pages long and way off the topic. We all know the rules
here are to stay focussed even though at times this too seems irrational.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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