ELEPHANT TO MF:
I think Marco's comments stike the tone of truthfulness and have a large
content of truth. Luckily Marco says things which also inspire further
comment - comment of a revolutionary kind - whether dynamic you will judge.
MARCO WROTE:
> IMO, THE SPLIT OF EXPERIENCE IN FOUR LEVEL IS WHOLLY INTELLECTUAL. A
> ghost, just like the gravity law. I mean, it's a good intellectual trick
> used by Pirsig to explain universe. We can't be sure that tomorrow
> someone will come to explain the universe diversely, offering a better
> solution, but, If we are here, it's probably because we all find in this
> explanation the best static latch we have ever found. Or, at least, one
> of the bests (where "best" means here harmonic, simple and matching the
> real life experience).
>
ELEPHANT:
Well, that must be right. After all it is an important part of MOQ that the
splitting up of experience is something done in our language, and that the
mystic reality is something continuous and undivided (Dynamic Quality:
Northrop's aesthetic continuum). To really grasp this is to remember that
any device for splitting up experience is just that: a device - not a report
of a reality out there.
That said, of all the 4 levels and the divisions which they picture, we do
find one particularly interesting: Intellect. The reason that I find this
level interesting is that the Intellect/Non Intellect dichotomy is strongly
connected to the Static/Dynamic dichotomy, which is a dichotomy of a more
fundamental kind, because it is not a division within patterns, but attached
to the division between all patterns and the mystically real. This is
something Marco's comments have jogged in my memory, and I will try to
explain what I mean. There seems to be some disagreement about where to
draw the boundaries of 'intellect' (I'm refering to discussions with Platt
in the 'other species' thread on MD) - and this is what we would expect and
allow for if 'intellect' was itself just another intellectual pattern. But
if we could show that 'intellect' somehow maps precisely onto the
Dynamic/Static split itself, that would give us a purer clearer notion of
intellect, and also one that corresponds to the real structure of the world,
rather than being merely a conveinient falsification of mystic reality.
What I'm suggesting is that there might be a way to say that intellect isn't
just qualitatively superior (more dynamic) but categorically superior (a
category which matches more exactly onto the essential dichotomy of
static/dynamic).
The way I suggest that we understand this is that All static patterns are
intellectual patterns: this is what Marco is saying. Biological, Social,
Inorganic: these are all divisions WITHIN the intellectual level. This is
not to say that a dormouse is an intellectual, but just to say that a
dormouse is an intellctual pattern - one arrived at by intellects, viz
biologists.
Against this proposal, considered as a reading of Prisig atleast, we can
cite all the passages where Prisig talks about the struggle of the
intellectual level against the social and biological levels. This doesn't
make any sense if the social and biological level are within the
intellectual level (intellect struggling against itself?).
But there is one way in which we can, I think, reconcile the talk of
conflict (and cooperation) between the levels with the idea that intellect
is a very different kind of level, with a different metaphysical status to
the others. That is to say that when Prisig talks about the stuggle of the
intellectual level, he just means the struggle of intellects. Intellects
struggle with the levels: that's what we do every day. Biologists struggle
with their patterns, Physcists with theirs, Sociologists and Historians
again struggle to make sense of their patterns, we all struggle to improve
and sort out the pattern of out lives. And all in all, there is a general
theme here: of intellects stuggling to impose good habits, High quality
static patterns, on the world. That is what the patterns are synthesised
for in the first place, but the stuggle doesn't stop there. Suppose one of
the patterns is a Tiger coming for you out of the forest: this is the
beginning of a stuggle of thought and soul, and not, you hope, the end. So
it is intellects which are in a struggle with the static patterns, I say,
and not just another level of static patterns.
If the "intellectual level" just means "intellects everywhere", then I can
see the idea of the intellectual level being more valueable than every other
kind of pattern follows logically: whatever value the patterns have, they
owe that value the the intellect whose patterns they are, so the intellect
has to be of superior value, if we consider it the sort of thing that value
attaches to. And if "intellects everywhere" are more dynamic than the other
kinds of pattern, then that's just because whatever dynamism those patterns
have, they owe it to the ability of the intellect to perceive dynamic
quality and to try to work towards it with static patterns.
This proposal of mine is going to take some explaining, still, and luckily
Marco's comments continue to inspire:
MARCO WROTE:
> Every level is identified by:
>
> a. A BASIC VALUE
> A "very refined" set of patterns (of the below level) level that is the
> basis for ALL the patterns of the new level, as it is able to carry the
> necessary information. Pirsig gives us the example of DNA, as the
> inorganic "machine code" for the biological patterns.
>
> Possible "machine codes" for the other levels:
>
> EMOTIONS for the social level.
> LANGUAGE for the intellectual level.
>
> [is it possible to talk about a machine code for the inorganic level?
> Force?]
>
ELEPHANT:
If language is the machine code of intellect, then it looks like there could
be no higher level of evolution, because it is a contradiction in terms to
suppose a "machine code" superior to language itself. Code is a subset of
language, not the other way around. So intellect, if it is the utilistation
of language, is not just one step up on the ladder: it's something more.
Categorically different, not just qualitatively.
"Machine code" is quite an inspirational coinage, I think, because the
workings of physics and biology require us to treat the world as if it
consisted of machines and mechanisms: patterns which relate set inputs to
set outputs in a regular way. The "Clockwork Universe" is not an entirely
dead metaphor, although it could perhaps be updated to read "programmed
universe".
Well, I guess the concept of mechanism and machine just doesn't make sense
without a machinist. This was once a profoundly flawed argument for the
existence of God: the argument from design. The flaws were (1) that the
history of the world needs no first cause, and (2) the question: if design
requires a designer who designed God? But if we MOQers are now saying that
the mechanisms we recognise in the world are static patterns instituted by
us to understand and utilise the enviroment, then it seems the argument from
design does prove something: i.e. that intellect exists and is the superior
value. Intellect then is no first cause in the historical sense, but it is
a first cause in a logical sense. Intellect itself designs, but needs no
designer because it is not a static pattern, or an evolutionary level of
patterns. Personality, ego, is a static pattern and therefore designed. It
is precisely for this reason that intellect is not ego.
I would attach intellect to personhood (a moral concept deriving it's value
from a metaphysical reality), but not personality (the mere acretia of
self-image patterns). I would take this to address some other problems
people have with the intellectual level. This idea I have about equating
"the intellectual level" with "intellects everywhere" rather than with one
level of patterns amougst others has alot to do with the disscussion we've
been having in MD about what right human beings should have, on account of
constituting somehow the intellectual level, to do as they must with other
species and the enviroment. It seems to me that "intellectual" is quite a
flabby concept, open to a variety of interpretations, whereas "intellect" is
quite a narrow and precise one for beings who perceive Dynamic Quality and
deploy static patterns. Prefering the latter concept leads to some
interesting moral observations:
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ELEPHANT TO KENNETH AND PLATT IN MD: MOQ AND OTHER SPECIES:
I will turn to other species shortly in an attempt to meet Kenneth's
concerns head on with a suggestion about the moral value of persons. But
first: some bald statements just cry out for a good old-fashioned
philosophical counter-example! Such as:
> PLATT:
> I see no moral difference between saving the patient or killing the
> germ. They are both sides of the same coin.
ELEPHANT:
Three examples throw doubt on this claim.
1. We often require the Germ to live, in a laboratory, in order to extract
information with which to save the patient(s). This is not entirely besides
the point, because it does mean that saving patients and killing germs are
not the same thing. You will now qualify your claim and say that saving
patients and killing germs *in patients* is the same thing. My other two
points address this.
2. Geriatric palliative care. You can argue that the 'disease' in question
is just Old Age, but in fact the old tend to die of perfectly identifiable
disease processes, and that includes germs, cancers etc. It's generally
agreed that we should try to save the patient, but it is also agreed that
saving the patient does not equate with doing everything you can under all
circumstances to keep biological processes continuing at the expense of all
'Quality of Life'. 'Saving the patient' turns out to be a complex concept,
because being a human being is not just being a functioning heart, or even a
pattern of brain-waves (anticipating the ecg point). It turns out that
'human being' is, surprise surprise, a Moral Concept. Being a 'person' is
more than being having functioning internal organs. For this reason, a
doctor does not save the human being by treating their body as if he has the
right to do whatever he damm well pleases with it, in the name of fighting
off all those germs. There is a duty of care, but there is also a duty of
respect. When the respect is removed, you are dehumanising the patient, and
that is the very opposite of 'saving' the patient. Doctors who continue
trying to kill off every germ beyond the point were the patient himself
would wished to have lived are not 'saving the patient'. They are
completely dehumanising and discounting the patient, and treating the body
instead.
3. Imagine a disease which medical science can triumph over, but only very,
very slowly. You can think of this in terms of a race to develop a cure,
while the victim lies prone in his bed and suffers, ventilors keeping him
alive, for fully fourty years. In the end we discover the cure and he
walks. This same situation exists if we think of ourselves as always
having had the cure, but a cure which is a very, very slow one. Like
antibiotic treatments for tuberculosis only fourty times worse. Now in this
case the imperative to save the biological life of the patient and the
imperative to kill the germ are the same. But is the patient just his
biological life? No. In which case, it looks as if the imperative to kill
the germ equates to the imperative to keep the poor victim alive and in
great pain throughout the majority of his life: is that 'saving the
patient'? It rather looks like the opposite to me. It looks like treating
the patient as a medical experiment, treating him less respectfully that you
would your dog. 'Cure a success: patient tried to kill himself'. Certainly
it is not giving 'Quality of Life' to anyone but the successful doctors.
I think all these examples show that 'saving the patient' and 'killing the
germ' are not as near the same as makes no difference. There is a
difference, and it has to do with the difference between 'saving the
patient' and preserving a biological pattern. It is only biological
patterns which germs attack - officious doctors can do violence to more
valuable patterns: and my name for those higher patterns is 'the patient'.
That's why doctors owe their (oath of) allegiance to the life of the
patient, and not to the death of germs.
One way of ensuring that Doctors treat the patient and not the disease is to
take out something called a 'living will'. The other is to educate doctors
into a respect for persons. But luckily, most doctors are already well
ahead of Platt on this one.
I suspect that a lot of Kenneth Van Oost's concerns have to do with this
moral importance of the 'person' - he may correct me on this. Besides the
approach to germs, 2 more of Kenneth's points seem to have something to with
this. First, there is the worry that valuing 'intellect' means devaluing
persons who don't have 'intellect' the way Prisig does - Lila comes to mind.
Kenneth was accusing (Platt's account of) MOQ of being right wing, but he
didn't mean free market! He meant 'Social Darwinist' or worse: the idea
that some human beings are just more valuable than others, and that their
interests should always triumph. I think that's a point we need to think
about, because it sure doesn't look like morality the way most people
understand it. It looks like might is right. The way to address it is to
point out that the meaning of 'intellect' is being stretched in quite alot
of directions here. There's no denying that Prisig is an intellectual and
that Lila isn't. But it isn't true to say that Lila has no intellect:
anybody who can conceptualize has intellect. Well now, what is it that
constitutes the higher level: intellectualism or intellect? There's a big
difference. If intellectualism is the higher level, then Lila is grouped
with other beings that have social value as their highest level of value,
like, say, termites. But if intellect is the higher level of value, not
intellectualism, it turns out that Lila is a morally valuable as Prisig is.
She is on the same level. This is the way it out to turn out, in my veiw.
Perhaps, indeed, the moral value of 'persons' or 'intellects', does a lot to
address Kenneths concerns about MOQ and other species in the animal Kingdom
too. Because in point of fact we treat cats and dogs as conceptualizers: as
intellects. We rely on them to recognise different human beings as
different, and this requires that they have, in effect, a concept of you. A
dog responds to his owner's command, but not to the same command given by a
stranger. Perhaps we have first hand experience of a dogs 'personhood' that
goes further. These are beings with an interior world. They are
intellects. That, I think, is what gives them the value they trully have,
and it is what separates them from germs.
I'm really quite chuffed about this idea for reading the "intellectual"
level as the level of "intellect" rather than as the level of
"intellectualism", because it seems to me that it addresses quite alot of
the concerns I've had about the level. It seems to me that Prisig treats
this higher level as a kind of political program - the sort of political
progam that can be a protagonist in world history, for example. But
intellectualism just can't be that sort of program, I have argued, because
intellectuals can (and in fact do) hold an infinite number of opinions about
what is best, intellectually speaking. In contrast, placing value on
'intellects' seems to underpin a comparatively clear political and moral
program: respect for persons - treating the human person as the highest good
in medicine, law, sexual relations et al. There is even a familiar ring to
this moral imperative: do not treat persons as if they were means only,
treat them as ends in themselves.
I guess the "intellectualism" interpretation [of the 'intellectual level']
would treat persons as being, ultimately, only means to the continuation of
thought. That does seem cart-before-horse. Perhaps some remarks about the
pragmatic unity intellectual theory and personal practice are needful?
[and I might make them if anyone takes me up on the offer - because I don't
think Q-Intellect can be de-personalised in the way that classical Reason
can be - persons aren't just means, whatever the objective]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
But I've gone on quite long enough already (enough already!).
PzEpher
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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