[MD] MD FW: The intellectual level and rationality

[Paul Turner]

Bo,

Paul prev: I accept the definition of metaphysics as a branch of philosophy.
To
>> try to move this forward, what is the definition of metaphysics that
>> you are using?
>
Bo:  I use LILA's definition:
>
>    As long as you're inside a logical, coherent universe of
>    thought you can't escape metaphysics.

Paul:  Okay, thanks.  So from your two premises:

(1) Metaphysics = a logical, coherent universe of thought
(2) Reality = metaphysics

I can deduce that:

Reality = a logical, coherent universe of thought

Hegel couldn't have agreed more.

>> Paul:  Yes, and if you read on into the paragraph you started to quote
>> you will see that that the different view of intellectual truth is:
>
>> "But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it
>> becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist.  Then one
>> doesn't seek the absolute "Truth."  One seeks instead the highest
>> quality intellectual explanation of things..."
>
>This paragraph says - as said before - that from Q reality seen
>SOM is transformed into the static intellectual level. "Many truths"
>is an oxymoron. What would the judicial system turn into with
>such premises?

Paul:  I think one can characterise the judicial system as an arena for
carefully assessing the intellectual validity of competing truths.

>> Paul:  DQ/SQ is the Quality reality but the MOQ and reality are not
>> equivalent.
>
>Well, no-one can stop you from repeating this, but as said,
>Pirsig's rejection of the Quality=DQ/SQ disproves this.

Paul:  Pirsig hasn't rejected Quality=DQ/SQ.  He just said that, since LILA
was published, Quality refers to DQ and SQ together.  What is rejected is
that Quality is something in addition to DQ and SQ.

But this is beside the point, which is that the MOQ is static so cannot
contain DQ and hence cannot rightly be equated with reality.

>Bo earlier:
>
>> >I have criticized the intellectual level -  it follows that the
>> >standard way of "containing" SOM is equally faulty
>
>> Paul:  No it doesn't follow from your criticism.
>
>No?  If the 4th level is the S/O distinction it follows that it
>"encases" SOM. Look to the new discussion with Ian and Mike.

Paul:  Perhaps you can use any insights contained therein to answer my
questions.  

With respect to faulty 'encasement' of SOM, that's what my argument below is
exposing in the SOL as far as I'm concerned.  Why, according to you, is
carbon okay to be contained in inorganic value patterns while matter or
substance or objects, such as a block of granite, are not?  These arbitrary
and inconsistent categorisations have no basis that I have seen explained
and are completely at odds with LILA:

"The problem of trying to describe value in terms of substance has been the
problem of a smaller container trying to contain a larger one.  Value is not
a subspecies of substance.  Substance is a subspecies of value.  When you
reverse the containment process and define substance in terms of value the
mystery disappears:  substance is a "stable pattern of inorganic values."
The problem then disappears.  The world of objects and the world of values
is unified."  [LILA p116]

Exactly the same can be said about mind:

The problem of trying to describe value in terms of mind has been the
problem of a smaller container trying to contain a larger one.  Value is not
a subspecies of mind.  Mind is a subspecies of value.  When you reverse the
containment process and define mind in terms of value the mystery
disappears:  mind is a "stable pattern of intellectual values."  The problem
then disappears.  The world of subjects and the world of values is unified.


Although one could argue that aspects of what is usually referred to as mind
are contained in social value patterns too.

>Paul goes on:
>> Then carbon compounds, being matter, exist inextricably and
>> exclusively at the intellectual level.
>
>This looks uncannily like SOM's idealism, only now intellect
>serves as "mind" and the inorganic level as "matter".

Paul:  You're thinking about this the wrong way round.  It's not that values
are contained in what has previously been referred to as mind and matter, as
if they are the starting point, but that what has previously been referred
to as mind and matter are innocuously contained in static value patterns.
That is a huge difference that seems lost on you.  No wonder you can't get
your head around Pirsig's formulation of the MOQ.

>If intellectual value was the S/O divide in Greece it must be so on
>Mars. 

Paul:  My argument is that intellectual value is truth, not S/O.

>Biological value isn't DNA or whatever was its first
>manifestation but LIFE.

Paul:  Precisely my argument, hence intellectual value isn't S/O or whatever
was its first manifestation, but TRUTH.

>But this is no problem, as you showed long ago there was an
>Oriental S/O era, it merely did not develop into a S/O
>metaphysics as it did in the West. A Quality-like development
>took over.

Paul:  Where is your evidence/research?  As far as my reading goes, the
Oriental intellectual tradition, insofar as it evolved out of the social
level Vedas, has a major difference to the west in that an underlying
concept of 'two levels of truth' is conspicuously prevalent.  I would argue
that this basic concept prevents any formulation of S/O from being anything
approaching an "era" of its own but restricts it to being amongst the
variety of schools which deal with the conventional level of truth.  Hence
there was no need for a "Quality-like development" to take over anything.
It was there from the beginning.  What Pirsig has added is the scientific
concept of evolution. 

>> As I've argued before, and as I've recently said in another post a
>> couple of days ago, any argument based on this 'fact' is fallacious
>> until you can prove that SOM is the ubiquitous and enabling structure
>> - the 'DNA' - of the intellectual level.
>
>I have just shown it. 

Paul:  Where?

>> I offer Nagarjuna's
>> Mulamadhyamakakarika as a direct violation of the putative ubiquity of
>> SOM in intellectual patterns.  Which brings us to...
>
>Well if so Nagarjuna was an Oriental "Pirsig" who showed that
>the S/O template can't account for existence's dynamic aspect.
>He had a much easier job than RMP however.

Paul:  The concept of evolution aside, I would say that the Orient didn't
need a "Pirsig."  He has said himself that in the east much of the MOQ would
be regarded more a platitude than a revolutionary metaphysics. 

Regards

Paul