[MD] MD The intellectual level and rationality

[Paul Turner]

Bo,

I've resent this to the new list because, in case you haven't sent one
already, I'm interested in a reply.

Bo on the 24th Nov:
"From Quality's meta-premise the social level is neither subjective nor
objective, it was the 4th level that brought this distinction into
existence. From its premises all social patterns - included emotions - are
subjective while itself is objectivity."

>> Paul:  Here you say that
>> intellect sees itself as "objectivity itself" but in the past, to
>> address idealism, the Sophists and pragmatism, you have said that
>> these are examples of intellect's "subjective over objective"
>> formulation.

<snip>

Bo:
>By now you will see what I mean by intellect's shift from
>"objectivity over subjectivity" to "subjectivity over objectivity"
>each claiming to be TRUE (perhaps that is a better term than
>"objective") 

Paul:  So I was correct in stating that, even by your premises, the
intellectual level is not "objectivity itself," which is what you had
claimed earlier in this thread (see above).

Paul previously:
>> I'm talking about logic as an explicit discipline.  There is almost
>> universal agreement that logic in this sense emerged at around the 4th
>> century BC in the Mohist school of China, the Nyaya school in India,
>> and the Aristotelian method in Greece.  I may add that they emerged
>> independently of each other, which is another spanner in the SOL's
>> works.

Bo:
>Thinking or intelligence isn't the intellectual level, but it has
>mesmerized us to believe so.

Paul:  I'm not just talking about thinking or intelligence but the explicit
discipline of logic.  I maintain that prior to around the 4th century BC
logic as a discipline simply did not exist.  This is part of my argument
that rationality is an adequate definition of the intellectual level where
rationality is not restricted to adhering to the premises of a
subjective/objective metaphysics.  

Rationality, to me, is the assumption that a belief is true by virtue of its
justificatory relationships with other beliefs and not solely by virtue of
the relationship of the belief to the believer or to the putative source of
the belief e.g. the Gods, which is the mark of a purely social level belief.
The relationships which justify intellectual formulations are those of valid
inference, algebra, and geometric axioms, which were all defined for the
first time in China (Mohism, Jiuzhang suanshu), India (Nyaya-darshana,
Aryabhata) and Greece (Aristotle, Euclid, Diophantus) somewhere between 4th
Century BC - 2nd Century AD.

As far as the west is concerned, this fits with your requirement that the
intellectual level started in ancient Greece but has the benefit of allowing
for an eastern intellectual level which has followed a different path yet
still shares the rationality common to both.  It also avoids this nonsense
about the MOQ having "an intellectual shell whilst it is alive in another
level" and other attempts to have your (fudge) cake and eat it.

>Bo earlier:
>> >SOL does not fall the
>> >least apart, it stands taller than ever.
>
>> Paul:  You remind me of "comical Ali" during the latest Iraq war.  My
>> favourite quote is - "We have destroyed 2 tanks, fighter planes, 2
>> helicopters and their shovels - We have driven them back."
>
>;-) If this makes you feel good, be my guest, it doesn't  bother
>me.

Paul:  Believe me, I crack myself up.

>> Putting it another way, I can just as easily say that the intellectual
>> level is mind but has nothing to do with SOM's mind.  It is the same
>> phenomena, just wrongly understood by a SOM.
>
>"Mind" is part and parcel of intellect's "mind/matter" aggregate
>and as little as matter conforms to MOQ's inorganic value, mind
>does to its intellectual value.

Paul:  Says who?  See below.

>> When this has been
>> suggested in the past by e.g. Scott, Matt, and myself, you have blown
>> up, saying that intellect is the mind/matter divide itself.  I can
>> turn your argument back on you and say that intellect is the
>> reason/emotion divide itself, hence emotion is an intellectual
>> pattern.
>
>The reason/emotion divide is one of intellect's many S/Os - that's
>correct, also that emotions as subjective is intellect's, but from
>the Quality  premises things are seen differently, emotions are
>the social level's "expression" .

Paul:  Does anyone else see the inconsistency here?  So mind/matter is part
and parcel of intellect's subject/object divide as is reason/emotion.  Yet
whilst it is acceptable that, from the Quality premises, emotions are
actually the social level's "expression," for some unexplained reason it is
not acceptable that matter is actually the inorganic level's expression or
that mind is the intellectual level's expression.  

>Bo earlier:
>> >OK, who am I to stop you from sounding more and more like
>> >Mark.
>
>> Paul:  May I request an argument against this statement from LILA and
>> the outright contradiction it presents to SOL, instead of an attempted
>> brush-off?
>
>?????????

Paul:  The reason you are puzzled at my request is because, in your attempt
to brush my arguments aside with an irrelevant reference to Mark, you
snipped the LILA quote I am referring to above in your original reply to me.
I repeat it in full below:

"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." [LILA, p344]
 
Regards

Paul