[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, All.

I fetch posts only in the morning to try to keep sane and this days load 
was 105 posts and most devoted to the intellectual level topic, so at 
least it proves that the MOQ won't find peace until it is mended. Ian's 
posts impressed me deeply,  I'm not saying he has joined the SOL 
interpretators, but alt least his door is ajar.     

28 June Mary wrote:

> There are many, many ways the Intellectual Level has been made
> manifest. .....

This is an important point. Up through the millennias intellect's original 
"O over S" (Objectivity or rationality ) has split into countless fractions 
and yet only rational arguments counts. Even the (sophist) "S over O 
(idealism) must argue rational for reality being man-made and 
subjective. Before intellect - on the social level - there were no 
arguments whatsoever for the reality of the gods, ha, they did not even 
have a reality different from experience *) that split is intellectual to the 
hilt. Look to Jewdom and Islam (social patterns) they have no 
argument about God, while Christendom (intellect influenced) has a lot 
of rational arguments for the existence of God)     

*) IMO this is the reason why Phaedrus of ZAMM looked upon (what 
we know as) social value as Quality Itself (Aretê) 

Mary continued:
> .....Science is only one fallout of SOM.  Is this a good time to
> explain?  The Intellectual Level is the set of Patterns of Value that
> hold with two key points.  
 
> - SOM says Quality with a capital "Q" does not exist because quality
> is nothing more than an attribute based on subjective opinion.  - SOM
> says that the Universe is composed of nothing more nor less than a
> collection of subjects and objects.

It's a valid, SOM says that value, morals, qualities are subjective and 
because "subjective" means untrustworty, "just what we like" it's next 
to non-existing. But true, the subject/object aggregate or distinction is 
indigenous to SOM      

> This is about as minimal a definition of SOM as I can get down to. If
> you take these two key assumptions as the entire basis of the
> Intellectual Level I believe all else follows logically; and despite
> the argument that this is too narrow or restrictive, I think you will
> find that everything short of the MoQ and equivalents that cannot
> otherwise be considered a Social Level value will apply.  

Right You can - as Pirsig said about science - search for an eternity 
and you will never find anything but the S/O in some configuration on 
the intellectual level. Intellect and SOM are one and the same. 

> For example, things like science, atheism, democracy, empiricism,
> economic theories and surely a bunch of other things I can't think of
> right now all follow as a logical result of these two premises alone. 
> What can be misleading is that many of the concepts derived from these
> two basic Intellectual Patterns appear to be in irreconcilable conflict
> with each other.  

Yes, SOM's or intellect's S/O leads to paradoxes if pursued beyond a 
certain point. This is what the MOQ sets right by making SOM its' own 
intellectual pattern where the paradoxes disappear the moment one 
sees the Quality Context. They emanate from treating the S/O 
(mind/matter) schism as reality itself, once it is seen as a (mere) static 
levels the paradoxes dissolves. (This really requires a whole post)  

> That is surely true, but the conflict is only in the
> details and not in the fundamental, unspoken assumptions upon which
> they are based.  It is these two unspoken assumptions that are
> pervasive and insidiously present in everything in the purview of the
> Intellectual Level.

Mary, you rock!  
 
> As we readers of Pirsig know, however, there is more to the Universe
> than subjects and objects.  There is Quality which is Statically
> exemplified by Morals, Quality, and Values, and if you agree with
> Pirsig's formulation of the Levels as Static Patterns of Value, then
> it follows that what is valued by the Intellectual Level is in
> opposition to what Pirsig defines as valued by the metaphysics of the
> MoQ.

... and roll !!!!!

Bodvar