[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[skutvik at online.no]

Horse.

22 June:

You wrote
> If you could come up with a single coherent argument then you might,
> possibly, get somewhere but so far even that seem unattainable.

As a first installment I would like to pursue Platt's a bit further 

Platt originally:
> > > Check the full quote: "Now that intellect was in command of society
> > > for the first time in history, was this the intellectual pattern it
> > > was going to run society with?" (Lila, 22) Note "intellect" in command
> > > of society, i.e., the intellectual level. One, not many.

Arlo:
> > Yes, check the full quote. "was this [SOM] the intellectual pattern
> > it was going to run with". Thanks for proving my point. SOM is one
> > particular intellectual pattern.
 
>From then on Arlo just kept parroting:  "THIS intellectual pattern" as if 
SOM is a Western intellectual variety and that there are lots of non-
S/O intellectual patterns. I would like to start at some earlier point 
(LILA's Chapter 22).

    Now, it should be stated at this point that the Metaphysics of 
    Quality supports this dominance of intellect over society. It 
    says intellect is a higher level of evolution than society; 
    therefore, it is a more moral level than society. 

See the "intellect" he speaks about is the higher level no mere 
pattern.. 

     But having said this, the Metaphysics of Quality goes on to say 
    that science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to 
    take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-
    object science has no provision for morals. Subject-object 
    science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no objective 
    reality. 

This says that science have "no provision for morals", but that is what 
charachterises the entire intellect. The only place you find morals is at 
the social level which is the (traditional) moral level par excellanec 
(religions) Ergo intellect = S/O.    

    You can look through a microscope or telescope or 
    oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a 
    single moral. There aren't any there. They are all in your head. 
    They exist only in your imagination. From the perspective of a 
    subject-object science, the world is a completely purposeless, 
    valueless place. There is no point in anything. Nothing is right 
    and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like machinery. 
    There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally 
    wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with 
    genocide. There is nothing morally wrong because there are 
    no morals, just functions. 

This reinforces the amorality of the intellectual level.

    Now that intellect was in command of society for the first time 
    in history, was this the intellectual pattern it was going to run 
    society with? As far as Phaedrus knew, that question has 
    never been successfully answered. What has occurred instead 
    has been a general abandonment of all social moral codes, 
    with 'a repressive society' used as a scapegoat to explain any 
    and every kind of crime. Twentieth-century intellectuals noted 
    that Victorians believed all little children were born in sin and 
    needed strict discipline to remove them from this condition. 
    The twentieth-century intellectuals called that 'rubbish.' There 
    is no scientific evidence that little children are born in sin, they 
    said. The whole idea of sin has no objective reality. Sin is 
    simply a violation of a set of arbitrary social rules which little 
    children can hardly be expected to be aware of, let alone obey.

Here is the original Platt quote where Arlo clung to the "THIS 
intellectual pattern" straw,  but it's plain that no intellectual patterns 
have provisions for morality, unless social patterns become "intellect". 
The "twentieth-century intellectuals" (now twentyfirst) dislikes Pirsig's 
blaming intellect for undermining law and order and - like Arlo - cling to 
SOM as just one intellectual pattern, but as shown - remove SOM and 
there is no intellect left - unless you resort to  intellect = intelligence. 

MOQ as a new intellectual pattern - which is supposed to set things 
straight - is also untenable. Nothing that "makes provisions for morals" 
can enter intellect without being attacked by its  immune system, and I 
believe that is exactly what's happening. All "intellectuals" works 
overtime to reduce  the MOQ to another dee-da-dum philosophy  
While the mystics cembrace the Quality/MOQ. 

So Horse, think and reason for yourself, no ruminating of the "Pirsig 
has rejected ...". 

Bodvar