[MD] What Bo Doesn't Get

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 8:45 PM, KAYE PALM-LEIS <mkpalm at wildblue.net> wrote:
> Krimel
>> [Krimel]
>> So you agree that DQ is simply change and uncertainty?
>
> Mati: Well more like I don't think we are at point to argue this
> point.

Dan:
Dynamic Quality can be change and it's motis operandi is uncertainty
but I don't agree with Krimel's statement. Too vague.


Mati:
DQ is alot things but defining it at this point seems a bit
> like putting the horse before the cart.  There is a lot of
> disagreement as to what the static levels mean and how they operate.
> To jump to DQ to build consensus seems a bit premature.
>
>> [Krimel]
>> Right, everything you can think of and everything anyone has ever thought of
>> are potentially part of the intellectual level. To actually be part of the
>> intellectual level as such, it must be a pattern. That is it must persist or
>> have extension in the temporal dimension.

Dan:
Key word: think. "The intellectual level is simply thinking." [RMP
annotation, LC) Makes sense to me.

>
> Mati: I think of the early primitive art in which animals were drawn
> on the cave wall, from my perspective they certainly were thinking
> about the animals and were conveying them in a temporal interpretation
> of the animals themselves. Based on what you suggest they must have
> been intellectual.  I would suggest they were displaying behavior that
> had an intelligence, but they were not intellectual.  Intellect
> requires a metaphysical basis.  That basis did not exist in a capacity
> to sustain itself as a level until Aristotle's S/O divide. I think
> there is a common agreement that intelligence existed long before
> intellect.

Dan:
Disagree. I think Robert Pirsig disagrees as well:

"The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between
intellect and society, subject and object, mind and matter, by
embedding all of them in a larger system of understanding. Objects are
inorganic and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual
values. They are not two mysterious universes that go floating around
in some subject-object dream that allows them no real contact with one
another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. That
evolutionary relationship is also a moral one.

"Within this evolutionary relationship it is possible to see that
intellect has functions that predate science and philosophy. The
intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an
ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its
historical
purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and
defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the tools
it invents for this purpose." [LILA]

Dan:
It seems clear that intellect requires no metaphysical basis. That
came later. Furthermore, by equating subject/object thinking with
intellect, you've effectively nullified the Metaphysics of Quality as
a working thesis. Subjects and objects are united under a larger
umbrella of understanding based on value.

>
>
>> [Krimel]
>> I don't think it is possible for intellect to precede society but if that
>> were the case it would indeed be a problem for the MoQ. However, we see that
>> the social level is primary in almost all primates and most mammals.
>> Intellect on the other hand only begins to show up in the great apes.
>
> Mati: I will respectfully suggest that your premise that thinking is
> intellect then indeed MoQ has a problem.  That has been the Achilles
> heal that Bo has been pointing out so persistently for so long.

Dan:
What is the problem? Perhaps if you specify we can work out a solution
mutually understandable.

>
>> [Mati]
>> The point is when we discuss something that can defined metaphysically has
>> always come home to the S/O reality.

Dan:
That doesn't mean S/O reality is intellect though.

>>
>> [Krimel]
>> That does seem to be Bo's oft stated notion. It is so clearly wrong that it
>> is a wonder that anyone buys, much less repeats it.
>
> Mati: It is not clearly wrong from my humble perspective, based on
> what you believe is the metaphysical value of intellect. It seems that
> some other might have come to the same conclusion as Bo has suggested.
>  The problem is SOM has created a messy web which tangles our notion
> of who we are.  Bo's notions rids the tangles and puts intellect in
> it's proper place and allows MoQ to be the next possible level.
> Otherwise MoQ seems fail to gather any meaning with any legitimacy.

Dan:
I'm sorry Mati, but I think you need a refresher course. Please take
the time to re-read chapter 12 of LILA. No more talking to Bo, please.

>
>>The MoQ is an
>> intellectual pattern that alleges not to be SOM as are eastern religions,
>> and work of any number of philosophers.
>
> Mati: I understand the need to suggest that MoQ is an intellectual
> pattern. And I agree that SOM and MOQ are two distinctive different
> patterns.  But if MoQ is a pattern of intellect of sorts it is
> completely separate entity from SOM(intellect).

Dan:
If? Mati, you seem an intelligent sort. If? Tell me, if the MOQ isn't
an idea, what is it? I've asked Bo the same thing and have never
recieved an answer. Don't you see that it makes no sense whatsoever?

Mati:
  I have privately
> discussed this issue at length with Bo.

Dan:
Oh Lord in heaven help us all.

Mati:
They function similarly in the
> same metaphysical discussion but MoQ is radically different from SOM
> in that provide a far more clearer understanding of all values that
> are defined.  Pirsig suggests, and I think correctly, that accounts
> for the meaning of all values, that was the shortcoming of SOM.  I
> know Bo will cringe at my suggestion that MoQ might be considered a
> Neo-Intellect, but that is an entirely different discussion.

Dan:
See the silliness that results in following such nonsense?

>
>> [Krimel]
>> Well "T"ruth is itself an intellectual pattern. Any talk of a social Truth
>> is just intellectualizing about the social. Social patterns are patterns of
>> interaction among con-specifics. Discourse about these patterns, for that
>> matter discourse itself, is at the intellectual level. Discourse can be
>> "about" anything and from any platform.

Dan:
This seems right. I like it.

>
> Mati: Truth is based on the prospective that is based on. Walk into
> any church and ask were truth resides, they won't give you an answer
> that is neccessarily intellectually based.
>
>> [Mati]
>> The metaphysical path of "encoding of experience into concepts" is a
>> dead end that gets nowhere metaphysically speaking in the same manner
>> as SOM.  Bo's simply points that out.

Dan:
If I might ask, where did you get the quote "encoding of experience
into concepts"? Is it one of Bo's?

>>
>> [Krimel]
>> Saying it is a dead end does not make it so. This issue of encoding and
>> decoding experience into concepts is fundamental to perception and
>> discourse. It is what we are biologically and socially equipped to do and
>> without it we have nothing to say no capacity to say it.

Dan:
Yes, agree.

>
> Mati: Encoding and Decoding of experience is done at the biological,
> social and intellectual level. The conceptualization is experience is
> done at both the social and intellectual level, and some might suggest
> it even happens at the biological level.  Again encoding and decoding
> of experience of concepts seems to be part of the capacity having
> intelligence not intellect, though it should be suggested that one
> needs a capacity of intelligence to allow intellect to function.

Dan:
No this isn't right. I don't even know how to untangle it.

>
> Krimel,
>> BTW, metaphysics, like physics, is mainly a matter of finding the smallest
>> set of concepts to account for the largest amount of experience. Static and
>> dynamic are two such concepts that account for a wider range of phenomena
>> than do subjects and objects or mind and matter.

Dan:
And they say the devil is in the details.

>
> Mati:  I find it interesting that of all the metaphysical phenomena
> that you had to chose from to contrast MOQ, you chose SOM to make your
> point.  Pirsig did the same thing. That is why, in part, I believe SOM
> defaults to Intellect.  There isn't any other metaphysical construct
> to default to in the same capacity, or any capacity for that matter,
> as the static value of intellect.

Dan:
Again, I am stumped.

Dan