[MD] MD FW: The intellectual level and rationality

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi David M. 

On 2 Jan. you wrote:

> I did not mean consumerism, I take materialism as assert that
> everything we experience/know can be explained in material terms. 

The MOQ idea is that experience is level-filtered; that 
"everything" is filtered through each level's value strainer. This is 
difficult to convey because at the inorganic level where there is 
no life, no nothing so it sounds outrageous to speak about 
experience. Yet, as Quality=Experience, the inorganic level is 
experience too. 

I can't go through it all, but when it comes to the 4th level it filters 
experience through its S/O-strainer and alternatively explains 
experience in materialist terms (the objective camp) but it has a 
subjective camp that explains experience in spiritual terms. This 
is intellect's eternal S/O see-saw. 

Reading you post I have this feeling that you haven't understood 
the first thing of the MOQ idea, but simply is an advocate of 
intellect's "subjective/spiritual side. Meaning that you don't see 
intellect as a static level but see it as where ALL experience is, 
alternatively as materialist and idealist.    

But intellect is a static level and the S/O-pattern is its value. You 
dear David is not the great sinner, you have read many books: 
Heidegger, Husserl, Hegel ...etc and believe that "they say the 
same as Pirsig". More dangerous is the professed MOQ-ists who 
wants the 4th. level to be a compartment of "ideas" where SOM 
sits in one corner and the MOQ in another as a "better" 
intellectual pattern. Something that makes a true mess - not only 
of the 4th level - but of the entire MOQ.   

> But
> the concept of matter generally being used lacks all sorts of
> qualities that cannot be reduced to the qualities that can be
> described in material terms ....snip.

Yes, yes this we know, no need to re-invent the wheel. In LILA 
Pirsig goes to great lengths to show that SOM's matter isn't 
substantial and that the MOQ explains this by making the so-
called physical world into its own "inorganic level" whose patterns 
has nothing to do with SOM's matter. This step is taken long ago 
by the MOQ ... supposed to be taken at least.  

> DM: Hegel's idealism is objective idealism not subjective idealism so
> I am not sure he could be described in this way, and his thought is an
> advance on Fichte for sure. 

"Objective idealism" was a new one ;-)  But the German idealists 
loved such expressions, they called their endeavour 
"Geistwissenschaft" (Spiritual Science) but it's a much of an 
oxymoron as theology a scientific study.    

> The problem with Hegel is his failure to
> grasp the genuine creativity of DQ. Hegel makes the creativity of DQ
> sound necessary .....snip

You surely know a lot and have read many books, but I don't 
manage to take this serious. Speaking about DQ in connection 
with Hegel as if he saw existence as Quality, or made the DQ/SQ 
slash, or saw the static level development? Maybe you read this 
into his philosophy, bless you.

> Sure, historically, the 4th level emerges full of SOM. 

You see that? Good!  But intellect is not a compartment that can 
be filled of SOM to various heights - or devoid of SOM - it IS the 
S/O divide!  

> But this is complex. The
> Enlightenment has a rational and empirical side ....snip

As complex as you want to make it. Renaissance and later 
Enlightenment is usually seen as the revival of the Greek spirit, in 
moqish it was the revival of the intellectual level from the 
Medieval lapse to the social reality.   

> I can certainly imagine
> using SQ/DQ terms and ditching S/O ones and yet still retaining
> philosophical thought and science. 

Sure, one can speak from intellect's S/O premises only keeping 
the overall MOQ context in mind. That's what I mean by keeping 
intellect's S/O clean and clear, not as the "sinners" proclaim that 
the MOQ is supposed to be an intellectual pattern and that one is 
supposed to speak in Q-terms. That a Q-science; a Q-physics; a 
Q-economics; a Q-geography ....etc are to be established. 
Completely nonsense!    

> Sure it is difficult not to use the
> short hand of objects rather than table-patterns or
> electron-type-patterns ..... snip.

It's a bit difficult to follow you David, but the more I read the 
better it sounds. I  believe you are ripe for the SOL interpretation 
;-)

> BO:
> > I too "understand science in terms that do not rely on SOM", but
> > definitely rely on the S/O distinction. There can be no science
> > without it.
 
> DM: Do we really need it? 

Need the S/O distinction. Yes and yes again!  It is intellect's 
value and dropping that is a slip-slide back to God knows where. 
If Whitehead thought you could do science without the S/O 
distinction he was deeply wrong. And here I must end this post as 
not be cut short by our censor. 

Again David, you are such a nice fellow and I hope you don't 
mind my sounding so wise-guyish, but I know the MOQ!   

Bo