3WD and Group
The race for the last word is on :-) You wrote:
> 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.
No dropping of the intellectual level at all, only of a definition that I
find counter to the MOQ.
> 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.
You said it! REASON! And what other is reason than OBJECTIVE?
Its shadow SUBJECTIVE follows suit. So S/O is intellectual level of
the MOQ, but then people start extracting an quintessence from
that: A mind realm where reasoning takes place ....and we are
back in SOM.
> 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:
I am not sure if you defend or (try to) demask intellect here, but
"psychology"? The teaching that 'man' has a psyche: a mind in a
brain doing abstractions from the sense data it receives from a
concrete reality out there. This is the Intellectual level all right - but
an intellect as SOM - that claims that THIS IS THE WAY IT IS! The
MOQ view is beyond intellect where there is no psychic/physical
and other S/O dualities except DQ/SQ.
> "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.
I admire your scholarly James study. Pirsig obviously owes a great
deal to him .....up a point, but the MOQ is revolution! I feel bad for
criticizing such level-headedness and objectivity, but ...
> 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.
"Metaphor a powerful abstraction tool...etc. True. It has become a
way of understanding something.....of understanding everything. So
powerful that it fills all reality with its ....(subjective) abstraction
versus the (objective) "thing". And applying this to theMOQ makes
it another idealism. No, one must work up a speed that tears
oneself loose from the SOM gravity field.
> "The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind." Lila pg.
> 114
It is said that you can always find a (Bible) text to support any
view. It's the initial overall perception that counts.
> Of course this value and the subsequent thoughts, mind, and reality
> are just metaphoric abstractions!
Just.....???? The "abstraction vs concrete" reason of Intellect is the
highest value there is only subordinate to Dynamic Value, but I feel
that your "just" indicates that abstraction is inferior to a concrete
mediated by the senses. Remember the "text" that says that
intetllect is out of SOCIETY!!!! Not out of Biology (senses).
Thanks for your contribution.
Bodvar
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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