[MD] Where does logic itself belong inside the MOQ?

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Andre

2 Jan. :

Andre previously:
> > Also, logic appears to be a method of establishing 'formal', 'true'
> > relationships. Following the 'logical' path leads to 'truth'
> > statements.

Bodvar:
> Yes, that's something different and more close to the "theorems" I'm
> harping on. Ancient people knew the Pythagoras "effect" long before
> Pythagoras, but he set out to prove that the sum of the squares ...
> etc. is valid always. That's the said intellectual attitude. But don't
> be fooled that "logic itself" only serves intellect, it was - still is
> - equally logical to a devout Muslim that Allah has given Mohammed the
> rules to live by. It's the premises that count.

Andre now:
> I agree and suggest further that it appears to me that the
> intellectual level, because dominated by the S/O distinction, is using
> 'logic itself' as a means to dominate the social level. It does so by
> declaring emotions (biological/social responses) as subjective and
> therefore illogical. At least this is one of the ways I am beginning
> to understand you SOL thesis.

Yes, that's exactly the way to understand the SOL. The social level (in 
its heyday) did not know any "formal logic" to underpin their god-run 
universe it was just natural. With intellect's advent common sense 
became objectified-formalized and just  as you say, the social reality 
was deemed illogic, superstitious, just in minds, subjective . All these 
derogatory terms are intellect's creations.       

> A few examples maybe: a hospital may run efficiently (logically) but
> as a human being one gets the feeling of being reduced to a patient
> i.e. a medical case. The 'user- friendly' interactions a syrupped
> covering over the clinical hardness of a logically organised health
> system.

Agree, but it must be that way to be productive.

> As a worker one is reduced to an economic unit. Expected to become
> part of a private/public economic system dominated by efficiency and
> effectiveness (results) and where the highst achievable morality is
> money (or money saving). One's social patterns (including responses)
> are supposed to be 'suspended' for the daily 8 or 10 hours work one is
> expected to put in.

> Perhaps I am a bit too negative but seen from intellect this may not
> be untrue.

Again, true, but what has brought prosperity to the intellect-steeped 
part of the world. 

> I notice in your post to Mary that the question runs as to which side
> intellect will take...biology...society? As you muse:'...will the MoQ
> join society to quell intellect?' I hope the MoQ will take hold and
> keep on responding to Quality. When it does that it will also see that
> it needs to look after its parents, grand-parents and great-grand
> parents ( the social,organic and inorganic levels). The notion that
> intellect has developed a momentum of its own must be halted/ checked
> otherwise the rust-belt Pirsig describes in LILA will only get
> worse.Imho. ( I am partially responding here to your comment that
> 'Communism was a rational (intellectual) system...having wrecked havoc
> etc . Capitalism is an irrational economic social system which has
> brought great prosperity but at the same time also wrecking havoc...).

A MOQ-Social alliance is - well - possible on the grounds that social 
value is what originally Phaedrus saw as Quality itself (Aretê in 
ZAMM) and the intellectual level (in its SOM capacity) is what 
opposes MOQ the most fiercely. You see how tough the notion of 
"MOQ a mere intellectual pattern" is (Steve & Co) and as long as this 
prevail SOM prevails. The tragedy is that Pirsig somehow is its origin 
with his QUALITY/MOQ "metaphysics"

But what you write about the MOQ looking after its ancestors is just 
right. The MOQ is the Q-context itself and only from there the 
intellectual level is seen a MOQ-subset (not anything that can contain 
the MOQ) and if this true context is realized things can develop the 
good way. While the MOQ as something that can will occupy the 
mindish-intellect and suppress rationality is dangerous. Why I fear 
Steve's alleged defense of Pirsig as much as Marshas woolly 
nonsense.       

> Something else yet Bodvar. In an earlier Popeye post (Dec.30) you say:
> 'However - before the MoQ, while intellect were SOM- the S/O
> distinction was regarded to be a bottomless, unbridgeable chasm, and
> because we know that the subject and object (mind and body) interact
> freely it vreated platypuses galore. This is how the MoQ resolves the
> mind/matter paradox, not Pirsig's tedious method in LILA.

> Can you elaborate please? I don't quite follow...which 'tedious
> method'?


OK, the MOQ correctly profess to incorporate SOM under itself and in 
this process resolving SOM's platypuses. If you have received LILA 
you will find it as the (resolution of the) mind/matter platypus and in 
Lila's Child (I'm out of town) as how SOM is encased. 

To begin with the last (from memory) Pirsig says that the inorganic 
and organic levels are "objective" because they belong to the material 
world, while the social and intellectual are subjective because they 
belong to the mental world. Had he said: "From SOM seen the MOQ's 
levels seem to fits these categories ...etc."  but no, it sounds as if 
there IS a pre-existing "mental/material" distinction that the MOQ's 
static levels is subordinated to. Besides ..."life"??.. is that an objective 
state? Organisms are tangible, but the quality of being alive is as 
ineffable as it comes.

Then the resolution of the mind/matter platypus. (still from memory). 
where Pirsig's is based on the biological and social level being the 
bridge between SOM's matter and mind. This presuppose that the 
inorganic level equals "matter" and that the intellectual equals "mind" 
which is wrong. Pirsig spends long passages in LILA to show that 
inorganic value isn't "matter", but drops the same on intellect not 
being "mind". All in all this explain s nothing, the matter/mind mystery  
merely moved to between the organic and the social levels.

The obvious solution - dissolution better - is plain and simple, namely 
the mind/matter paradox is created by the intellectual level while it 
was SOM, making the S/O distinction a bottomless abyss that nothing 
can cross - on one side everything is mind, on the other side 
everything is matter. The MOQ shows that this is merely a static 
distinction, the S/O is an aggregate - one is incomplete without the 
other. Why Pirsig did not see the obvious (that Phaedrus saw by 
making SOM=intellect)  is a mystery, but his obsession was that of 
proving the unprovable Quality=Reality axiom and it left the MOQ an 
unfinished symphony.
          
> Re my abode here in China, English spellings differ. Try perhaps
> Shangzhou...follow road nr.312 east south east out of Xi'an. Along the
> same road, farther east there is Danfeng etc. etc.

Will check when back.

> Re; 'where are the Chinese Q- basically? I will respond to this at
> another time...if you don't mind.

Good, any time

Bodvar