[MD] MD FW: The intellectual level and rationality

[David M]

Bo

Bo said:  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.

DM: Agreed.

Bo: 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.

DM: Pirsig calls it the intellectual level not the S/O level, you have
not convinced me to change this yet, S/O looks too narrow to
identify all cultural patterns that go beyond social values and
relate to intellectual values. They are not simply S/O values.
Yes objectivity is an intellectual values, so is honesty, truth,
empirical evidence, logic, reason, clarity, simplicity, consistency,
universal applicability, etc. Pirsig talks about the 2 lowest levels
cover object patterns and the 2 higher subject patterns, no
talk about a subjective description of all patterns (idealism)
or an objective one (materialism) I think I know what you mean
but there are a number of thinkers who do not try to move to one
of these poles of the common but not universal dualism of our
intellectual culture, so S/O is too narrow a way to define the intellectual
level, a part? Yes , the whole of the 4th level? No.

> 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.

DM: Human experience is of course grounded in the 4 levels,
we absorb light/heat as a positive value at a certain range or
negative if too hot (stove), we enjoy sex/food with the same
values as animals, we enjoy company as social beings,
and Pirsig, Darwin and Heidegger as intellectuals. Lower
beings rocks, plants experience less levels. SQ becomes
mechanistic in its rigidity. DQ is required for evolution
at all levels. Some patterns you can kick -objects. Some
patterns you can't inflation but they are objectifiable patterns
anyway -only SOM gets confused.  Whatdo I not understand?

> 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".

DM: There are overlaps, some errors in all of them, but they fill
in many gaps left uninvestigated by Pirsig. Pirsig's main
weakness is his lack of fuller exposition. And the levels really
need more sub-division for better understanding of evolution.

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.

DM: OK, ideas are intellectual static patterns, like SOM. Why is the MOQ
any different? The only thing I can think of is that the MOQ gives us
a way to value DQ where as SOM is overly obsessed with SQ and
to often tries to describe the top 2 levels of SQ in terms of the bottom 2,
this is what I mean by materialism. If we say MOQ=a new level of values
beyond the somewhat dry intellectual ones, that's good point, it puts values
in a new perspective, it puts DQ at the topof the value table -good.
What else?

>
DM: 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.


DM: I thought that's what you wanted to do and make it a square!

 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: Yes MOQ rejects substance, SOM does not. That's exactly the good
intellectual 4th level idea the MOQ is putting forward, spot the problem 
with
your S/O 4th level idea? The MOQ takes the M out of SOM but then it
says that S and O are not separate substances they are both just patterns,
and there is also something else SOM has been masking from our
understanding i.e. DQ (of course the idea of DQ has always shown itself
a bit in religious and idealist and vitalist and eastern and artistic 
thought).


>> 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 ;-)

DM: It should not be, what do you think an absolutely necessary
order is? See Charles Taylor on objectivity and subjectivity in Hegel.

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.

DM: Oxymoron only under SOM and essentialism. What science
could we have without spirit & experience?

>
>> 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.

DM: See the discussion of Hegel's overcoming of dualism in
Ivan Soll's book on Hegel. I give Hegel his due (are you in any positon
to comment, read all his stuff have you?), & long
before I read any Pirsig. Did DQ only come into existence
when Pirsig invented it? Funny how all the levels got here without
Pirsig's invention! How do you imagine Hegel puts evolution and
dialecticinto his system without fishing around in the activity of what
Pirsig calls DQ? That I claim as obvious, no more. Clearly what
Pirsig identifies as DQ is more than others that came before him.
Not seeing this looks like cultism to me.

>
>> 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!


DM: Why? DO you have any good reasons, your attempt at clarity
seems to leave reality behind. You are not wrong to attempt it,
but it does not fully work, maybe for 90%ish of intellectual
values, but certainly not 100%. And if the MOQ is taken up
this percentage starts to drop even more.


>
>> 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.

DM: & you're being too simple. Is Augustine an intellectual
or not? Did Galileo believe in God and try to read his mind
via nature? Is nature a source of values for romantic intellectuals?
You could call this an S-O seesaw, but it seesaws so much where
exactly is the divide? The real divide comes later when SOM
starts to turn into just a OM a materialist metaphysics the view
held by 80% of today's ignorant scientists and philosophers.


>
>> 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.


DM: No using MOQ terms patterns and dynamic emergence and dropping
subjects and objects, are you not listening?


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!


DM: Pirsig replaces subjects and objects and causality by the levels
and the striving for quality, surely you know this?

>
>> 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


DM: Not so far, still can't see the quality to motivate me.


> ;-)
>
>> 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: Why? Why? Why? There are patterns, values, dynamic activity,
what else fo you need? You can quantify and relate patterns without
any reference to objects. Sure you need to name patterns, objects are
just the temporary emergence of certain patterns of patterns. Are you
hanging onto essentialism? Studied tones of philosophy of science, see
no need for S/O distinction any more. Most science barely discusses any
s-type phenomena these days except in  materialist form, so where is
there a distinction? Sure science reaches excellent levels of common
agreement but this can no longer be seen as separable fromour human
perspective, so where is the objective view from nowhere?

>
>> DM: Do we really need it?
>
> Need the S/O distinction. Yes and yes again!  It is intellect's
> value

DM: One key one, but it has run its course and can be overcome by MOQ.

 and dropping that is a slip-slide back to God knows where.

DM: For me, it is a way to advance the move to MOQ.

> If Whitehead thought you could do science without the S/O
> distinction he was deeply wrong.

DM: Have you read him then? If not, you really should take a look
and you might learn that you can. I think you can. I can think of
no reason why you can't. Got any examples or arguments to demonstrate
your belief?


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!
>

DM: Your choice, does not make you right though. It's
been fun, I await your rebuttles, I remain open to persuasion
at all times, are you up to the job?



> Bo
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