[MD] Food for Thought

[ian glendinning]

HI DMB, you write very long e-mails, so I'm struggling to take in
every word ... or rather the relevance of all your points to the one
point I made ...

just a couple of reactions ?

"social belief"
I think you miss Arlo's suggestion ? ... belief is intellectual,
social is action.

You also said
I'd argue that there are beliefs based on tradition and faith and then
there are intelllectual assertions.

Look DMB, it's like you are deliberately missing the point being made.
What you are saying is true, but it doesn't seem to provide a
definitive basis for deciding which kind of truth we're dealing with
at any given point. Even intellectual assertions are based on premises
already believed, not every intellectual assertion is made a priori,
from the ground up is it ? At the point of making that new assertion,
you cannot unpick the entire history of ideas up to that point to
ensure all the premises are believed because they too were
"intellectual". "Social" activities are involved in ideas right up to
the point where they are used as the basis of a new assertion. I know
I must be missing something, that I'd hoped the MoQ would clarify, but
if it's there, I'm not seeing it.

"MoQ is supposed to clarify"
I say obviously, but it seems in need of clearer stating, if we're
going to communicate it.

Be nice to follow this up point by point, and see where we get.
Ian

On 12/16/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Arlo said:
> To restate, I believe (social pattern) in the Law of Gravity (intellectual
> pattern). ...The "idea of god", then, is to me a low-quality intellectual
> pattern, for the reasons I've been working through with Craig, but I can't
> say that the "idea of god" is a social pattern, while other ideas are
> intellectual. You see? This is my problem with some of the terminology
> surrounding the S/I levels.
>
> dmb says:
> I've read all your posts in this thread and haven't seen any reference to
> the idea that the levels are to be distinquished by that principle of
> opposition. Its really the only idea I've put forward on the topic so far
> and yet it has been bypassed entirely. Its like everybody has rejected it,
> but without a word about as to why it has been rejected. Again, the idea is
> simply that biological values are about controlling and overcoming the
> forces of nature while the social level values are aimed at controlling and
> overcoming the forces of biology and the intellectual level is aimed at
> controlling and overcoming the forces of society. This principle of
> oppostion is framed in terms of evolutionary relationships, of course, and
> the basic idea here is that each level breaks free from the previous
> limitations and must in some sense oppose its parent level in order to
> achieve its own independence and to pursue a different kind of good, if you
> will. I think your problem with the S/I terminology could be sorted out
> using this principle. Instead of making belief social and the ideas so
> believed intellectual, I think its much, much better to examine beliefs and
> ideas in terms of their origins and purpose. Since these two top levels are
> both what we'd normally think of as "mental", I don't think its useful to
> sort things out in terms of ideas and beliefs. I mean, the question is how
> do we distinquish social level beliefs and ideas with intellectual level
> beliefs and ideas. And it seems that we can't really sort things out by the
> unqualified content because there are social level faith-based beliefs about
> God and there are philosophical assertions about God too. Whitehead and
> Falwell have different beliefs on that topic, for example. Pirsig and the
> Pope differ with respect to God and mysticism and picking up bar ladies,
> etc..
>
> Ian said:
> I think the "authority is a social concept" .... is going to prove a key
> point. ...I think the key thing will prove to be whether the control /
> freedoms of those belief systems are phsyical (action by authority) or
> mental (communication).
>
> Arlo replied:
> I think this is perhaps similar to what I've been saying in differentiating
> high and low quality intellectual ideas, rather than social and intellectual
> "ideas". That is, intellectual patterns that depend on social force are
> low-quality intellectual patterns, because they suffocate DQ on the social
> level.
>
> dmb says:
> This, it seems to me, is exactly the sort of confusion that is supposed to
> be cleared up by the MOQ's distinctions. As the story goes, soldiers and
> policemen have always played a role in controlling the biological forces and
> this sort of physical restraint is necessitated by the nature of the forces
> being controlled by them, which are forces that can't be "talked" into
> compliance. This is the kind of "authority" that issues from the barrel of a
> gun or the business end of a spear or whatever. But then, as history and
> cultural evolution procedes, the social level uses this same tatic to
> enforce the belief in certain dogmas and such. The social values that did a
> tremendous job of creating a moral structure in which the organism could
> thrive becomes the oppressor of intellect rather than the protector against
> savagery. The social level keeps on doing what it has always done and the
> confusion and horror we've witnessed in the last century or two is a result
> of the fact that this function is an advantage when its directed at thieves,
> murderers and rapists but it can't rightly be applied upward at the
> intellectual level. Social level values gave birth to the intellectual
> level, but sees it as a threat, not least of all because the flaw in it has
> led to a situation where it has taken sides with biology. Hedonism and
> reactionary poliitical movements and other anti-intellectual impulses are
> also a result of the confusion. The MOQ is suppose to sort this out by
> showing that there is a point and a purpose to social level beliefs, by
> showing that its "authority", its use of physical restraint is highly moral
> when directed at one thing and highly immoral when its directed at another.
> The word "authority" can refer to state sanctioned violence AND to those
> with expertise in certain kinds of knowledge, in the way that Hawking is
> considered an "authority" on physics, for example. I suppose the apparent
> interchangability of this term only displays our confused conventional
> wisdom on the topic. But I think its pretty clear that tradition and
> empirical evidence constitute two entirely different kinds of authority.
> Nobody ever enforced the law of gravity with a gun nor has anyone served
> time for violating it. The rules of evidence are not designed to control
> biological forces, but rather to put restraints on what can be asserted as
> true. The authority of the intellectual level has an entirely different
> basis. Not only CAN we be talked into compliance, its the only proper way to
> deal with beliefs and ideas.
>
> Ian said:
> In the later case, an "authority" on a subject can make all the
> pronouncements he likes, but it is intellectual if I am physically allowed
> to ignore him and follow my own thoughts. THIS IS THE KEY. It is social if
> society's arrangements for governance allow him to "impose" that authority.
>
> dmb says:
> I guess we can imagine a situation where somebody decides that everyone
> should believe that E=mc2 and is willing to use physical force to achieve
> compliance, but that would be crazy and it wouldn't transform Einstein's
> equation into a social level belief. I mean, it does seem this distinction
> is key, but you're putting the key in upside down or something. Adding to
> what I've been saying about the differences in purpose and in kinds of
> authority, it seems that evidence has a certain "force" even if its not
> physical. Empirical data can't actually twist one's arm, but failure to
> comply will keep a person out of the journals and could, rightly I think,
> wreck one's intellectual credibility. Its moral to force compliance in that
> way on that level while the use of imprisionment would be wildly
> inappropriate. Obviously, as Pirsig points out, social level values are the
> middle term. Its relationship with biology is completely different from its
> relationship with the intellect.
>
> Arlo said:
> Well, I agree with you in part. I think again its a distinction between high
> and low quality intellectual patterns, not social and intellectual patterns.
> So I'd say the "idea of god" is a low quality intellectual pattern precisely
> because it depends on a huge amount fo social force and power to promulgate
> itself.
>
> dmb says:
> Again, I'd argue that there are beliefs based on tradition and faith and
> then there are intelllectual assertions. There are low quality intellectual
> concepts about God and there are traditional beliefs that have no
> intellectual merit at all. There is the kind of belief in God that simply
> refuses to subject itself to the rules of evidence, the kind that rejects
> the thought of Darwin, Marx and Freud as a bunch of Satanic lies. But notice
> that traditional theism is all about the rules of morality, most especially
> the kind we'd call the prohibitions against vice. Notice how this level of
> belief is about conforming to certain kinds of behaviour and the beliefs are
> essentially designed to give the ultimate sanction, to provide a cosmic
> level of authority, as if God himself were most interested in who sleeps
> with who above all else. This is not an "idea", per se. As an idea, it
> totally indefensible. Its simply an expression of the rigidity of the
> prohibititons so sanctioned. Thou shalt not commit adultry, not because it
> would deeply wound the spouse or risk the unity of the family or otherwise
> do great harm, but becasue the creator of the universe said so and you'll be
> tortured in hell forever if you don't. That is not an idea so much as a
> sentiment, an expression of what's good and bad in the way of basic social
> institutions like the family. In this way, social hierarchies, structures,
> its myths and heroes all reinforce each other in the task of controlling the
> appetites of the organism. The family structure, for example, doesn't exist
> to prevent sex but to control it. The king has the biggest chunk of land and
> the largest herds just like Dad gets the big piece of chicken at dinner time
> even though neither hunts for himself. I mean, the basic needs of the
> creature are all molified and re-channeled by social structures.
>
> This is another part of the problem with intellect. It has achieved
> independence from this level and is supposed to be going off on a purpose of
> its own. But the failure to see this has led to a situation where the
> intellect, through technology, has merely joined the social level's task.
> The intellect is NOT supposed to be used just to find food or protect us
> from danger. That's what makes it so empty and hollow. Now we just have a
> lot of overprocessed, cheap, nasty food that isn't even healthy. Now we have
> enough "protection" to destroy the planet many times over. Its the ultimate
> in rational and efficient crappiness.
>
> I guess I'm trying to make a case that this distinction is very much worth
> making. It is designed to untangle all kinds of confusion. I think the LAST
> thing that its supposed to do is equalize science and religion. The purpose
> of criticizing SOM is not the same as criticizing theism. Its not because
> "god" and "substance" are both mythical. Its not because they both rest on
> assumptions. And its worth pointing out that almost every Western theist
> alive today is operating with the assumptions of SOM and so are the secular
> scientific materialists. The theists are simply guilty of something else on
> top of sharing those assumptions with their faithless counterparts.
>
> Nuff fer now,
> dmb
>
> "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
>
> "I am a pious man and believe that whoever fights bravely in defense of the
> natural laws framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by
> the lawgiver."
>
> Quotes from Hitler in 1941 and 1944, respectively.
>
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