[MD] MD FW: The intellectual level and rationality

[skutvik at online.no]

Paul.
You resent this today, I had replied but it did not show up so 
again ... 

Mark, you asked me a question (in a decent way) so see 
somewhere below. 

On 30 Nov. you wrote  

> 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.   

Agree, I think Aristotle was the instigator of logic as an  
academical discipline.  

> 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. 

As said many times, SOM did not start as neither subject/object 
nor mind/matter or any of these latter day dichotomies, but 
ZMM's idea is that SOM is imminent in the very first search for 
eternal principles.   

> 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.  

OK why make it simple when one can "bend it like Paul" ;-)  
Again, ZMM sees the early search for principles beyond the 
myths as the embryonic S/O. The principles "objective" and the 
old myths just "subjective". When will this sink in?    


> 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. 

When the Egyptians erected the Pyramids 3000 years BC, they  
surely calculated position and drew diagrams ...etc. but did not 
care about axioms, theorems and such fallouts from the  search 
for (objective) principles.  

> 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. 

OK, no small thing to have you admit that the intellectual level  
DID emerged with the Greeks, thus it's value must be the S/O 
divide, but then you try to save the appearances by a different 
intellectual level in India. Yes I know it's  Pirsig's but we are not to 
abandon logic. There's just  one level, so how can there be a 
non-S/O in India? I can't fathom why you launch it again and 
again.  

My "cake" metaphor is most apt. Any grand theory has its  
"framework" in the former theory's terms, while creating a new  
reality. Einstein's curved space has no meaning without Newton's  
flat space. To switch between the two a set of equations is 
needed  (Lorentz Transformations) and SOL fits perfectly as the  
transformation between intellect and the Quality Reality.  And I 
no longer hold that the MOQ is a static level of it's own, rather 
what contains the static level's.         

Bo earlier: 
> >"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. 

If you refer to the LILA quote we may bring it up here? 

    "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] 

The impossible thing about this way of "encasing" the SOM inside  
the MOQ is that it sounds as if SOM still is valid: that societies 
are in our minds and that biology is "out there". This is out of  
tune with the MOQ that has declare the SOM nil an void.  and 
consequently can have no relevance to its own levels this way. 
Think for a change Paul!

Bo before: 
> >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  

This is for Mark Maxwell too.

Mind/matter is SOM and intellect's value. Not very sensational 
that? 

> as is reason/emotion.   

Emotions=subjectivity, and reason=objectivity ...seen from inside 
intellect, yes  

> Yet whilst it is acceptable that, from the Quality premises, emotions
> are actually the social level's "expression," for some unexplained
> reason 

That emotions belong at the social level I see as obvious.  

> it is not acceptable that matter is actually 
> the inorganic level's expression or that mind is the intellectual 
> level's expression.   

Ref. the above about inorg.+ biology meaning "out there" and 
social + intellect "in here". This is invalid the moment SOM is 
rejected. Mind and matter cannot be smeared across the static 
range, only used in the SOL way as the VALUE of the distinction.  

While  "sensation", "emotion" "reason" are all valid expressions.     

Bo