[MD] MD FW: The intellectual level and rationality

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi David M.

As not to become bogged down in all kinds of details I take the 
liberty to pick and chose. First to you entry (of 5 Jan.) in the 
"Edge" issue that has some bearing on it:

> I just think we will be better off when we accept
> that science is about thinking & creating concepts/theories
> applying them to experience, fitting up controllable experiments,
> and attaining agreement about the meaning of the results with a
> wide a community as possible. Objectivity/true? Well these
> are nice compliments, but provisional ones.

You (still) seem to believe that the MOQ looks on science as true 
or objective in a somish sense, the idea is that the MOQ looks on 
the SOM (the subject/object aggregate as a static value. One that 
wasn't known before, and this new way of looking on things is the 
dangerous aspect of the MOQ. Your "doubt" about its objectivity 
is merely newageism.   


OK, over to your 4 Jan. post in this thread.

> 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. 

I don't claim that the terms "subject(ive) or object(ive) occurs in 
all intellectual patterns,  but can you imagine any of the 
mentioned phenomena without it? "Objectivity" is meaningless 
without "subjectivity". "Honesty"? It's no intellectual value, social 
reality surely knew that virtue, but TRUTH in the Socrates sense 
meant something else. "Empirical evidence" is of course as S/O-
ish as it comes. "Logic"? If you mean the ability to draw 
conclusions from observations it's not an intellectual value, but 
logic in the Aristotlelian - dialectics - sense is S/Oish ...as are the 
rest of you examples.       

> 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) 

After the SOM is solemnly rejected Pirsig introduces subjective 
and objective as applying to the MOQ. It's this atrocity I protest. 
And you have obviously not read all of Pirsig's annotations in 
"Lila's Child where there's plenty of "subjective descriptions". I 
feel like a fireman that must put out all the SOM flare-ups that 
Pirsig himself ignites, and all I get is ingratitude   ...sob!  

> 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.

The VALUE of the 4th level is the S/O! There is no lack of 
thinkeres who wants to transcend SOM, but these are not 
moqists. In the MOQ - and that is the only thing that interests me 
- the 4th level must be kept clean. Its the MOQ itself that 
transcends intellect. 
 
> DM: OK, ideas are intellectual static patterns, like SOM. Why is the
> MOQ any different? 

Ideas? When a Stone Ager looked on the starry sky he surely had 
ideas about the lights being gods and goddesses. No, the  
intellectual level is a very particular IDEA, namely that of the said 
"starry sky" having an OBJECTIVE explanation and the god-
explanation was SUBJECTIVE.  

> 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. 

Forgive me David but this is well-meaning nonsense. The SOM 
knows no DQ, it sees existence through it S/O filter. DQ came to 
be with the MOQ which sees existence by its DQ/SQ filter, the 
thing is that it takes over the metaphysical 'M' from the SOM 
which is left behind as the value of the S/O distinction. 

> 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?

Now you talk sense, but the MOQ as a static level is not correct, 
it's rather the meta-reality that contains/rurrounds the "dry" static 
universe.   

> 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 problem is your standing with one leg in the SOM and one in 
the MOQ seeing the 4th level as mental compartment where 
ideas reside (as "intellectual pattern" to make it sound more 
moqish). Yes, the MOQ's rejects substance, but that is a minor 
adjustment after the major Quality reorientation is made.       

> 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. 

You have this gift of one moment sounding the staunchest  
MOQist - even SOList - and the next absolutely  ....remote.  Yes, 
the MOQ takes over the 'M', but not "..saying that S and O are 
not separate substances" rather that the S/O distinction is the 
highest static value.

> DQ (of course the idea of DQ has
> always shown itself a bit in religious and idealist and vitalist and
> eastern and artistic thought).

Yes, there has always been something that didn't fit the S/O 
scheme, and now - from the MOQ - we can see the reason, 
namely that the SOM was a faulty metaphysics, which serves 
better as MOQ's 4th static level.  

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

OK you may have a point about "objective idealism". SOL says 
that the 4th level is the S/O distinction, meaning that there aren't 
just "objective" intellectuals but "subjective" ones as well. The 
empiricism of the eighteenth century were convinced that that 
qualities are created by ourselves was objectively true. 

However, the point about the S/O distinction is that this schism 
came to be with the 4th level. Idealists may claim that mind is the 
creator of it all - objectively seen - and the materialists may claim 
the opposite, the point - again - is that this was not known at the 
social level. Among the proverbial Stone Agers there were no-
one that asked; "Is this about gods objectively true or is it just 
subjective nonsense. Nor were there another one who said 
"Listen Gork, it may be subjective, but subjectivity is objectively 
all there is  ...blah blah. "    

> 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. 

No, I haven't read Hegel, you surely have read ten times as much 
as I, but when one comes across a philosophy that assimilate 
everything it's a great relief, Have you read all Medieval 
philosophy? Surely not, the past gets compressed into one page 
by the present.    

> Did DQ only come into existence when Pirsig invented
> it? Funny how all the levels got here without Pirsig's invention! 

You too with this silly objection? How did the universe manage to 
work without Newton's gravity. This is exactly the same point. All 
great theories create a universe run by their new premises.  The 
MOQ created a Quality Universe. 

> 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.

OK Point taken, I promise to look into Hegel to refute this. 

> 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.

The issue here was that you see the 4th. level as mostly S/O, but 
not all. Can't you get it that the static levels are incomplete for the  
very reason of not being dynamic . I am convinced that we agree 
hadn't you been so hell bent on NOT understanding. The 4th 
level is STATIC - the S/O does not cover all existence's dynamic 
aspect. If we look back on the social level it was not complete 
either and DQ worked itself out of that. This goes for the 
biological and inorganic too.   

> 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? 

Intellect's S/O did not spring ready-made into existence its just 
from the present we can see the trend, Augustine was an 
Aristotelian and as such a SOMist, but had God as his objective 
reality, so did Galileo yet subversively working for God's demise. 
Kepler, Bruno, Copernicus all worked inside the religious 
framework, even Newton looked upon himself as a religious 
thinker and the "Principia" as some secondary thing, but their 
search to demonstrate God's hand in the workings of the universe 
had the S/O distinction built in, already God had become a 
outsider who had to tend to the universe lest it would stop. 

This is about as much as I manage, I have made my point over 
and over and another time won't  make a difference.
I maintain that you are on the brink of understanding the SOL, but 
my famous ability to sound so cock sure may not be very 
productive.

Bo