[MD] Reason, Tradition

[david buchanan]

Matt, Platt and all:

I'm only commenting on a couple small nuggets, but I think they go to the 
heart...

Matt said to dmb:
I gather you say rejecting the distinction would mean "admitting that 'our' 
values are as inculcated as anyone else's" because you don't want to admit 
that.

dmb says:
Its not that I don't want to admit that. Its just that I don't think it 
matters. As I understand the MOQ the social and intellectual level values 
are both "inclucated", but that doesn't stop them from being different. It 
seems that going along with Platt's idea of the "individual level" might be 
source of confusion here. See, I think the intellectual level has a 
collective dimension just like the social level does. I think its a big 
mistake to equate the 3rd/4th level distinction as anything like a 
collective/individual distinction. And it seems to me that this has 
everything to do with the idea that both kinds of values are "inclucated". 
See, I think the MOQ happily accepts this fact but still asserts its version 
of the tradition/reason distinction. The mythos over logos idea from ZAMM, 
the one that paints reason as a grown-up version of myth, is modified in 
Lila to assert that the intellectual level is the child of the social level. 
In the full-blown MOQ, logos is not just a bigger or better version of the 
same thing, but has become its own distinct creature. You know, dependent 
yet discrete.

Matt said:
...I haven't been talking a lot about the particulars of Pirsig's solution 
because the claim has been that the very effort to categorize along those 
lines begs the question over your opponent,...

dmb says:
I'd like to persuade you that Pirsig's distinction doesn't involve this 
question-begging problem. We can "admit" that our values are inculcated. We 
can "admit" that religious conservatives and secular liberals and both 
offering a set of values. We can lock the back door to keep out the gods 
too, but I still think we can assert these categories. Like I said earlier 
today in the "Absolute Truth" thread, this distinction is based on empirical 
evidence. Beyond the social science stuff I mentioned, there is also a 
mountain of hard data in developmental psychology that supports this 
distinction. I've only seen a tiny fraction of this material myself, but 
Wilber makes great use of it in his work. There are lots of ways to approach 
the issue, but the point is that there is some kind of critera, some way to 
measure these things. They don't rest on eternal truths of course, and there 
is always room for debate about the meaning and validity of the data, but 
there is data. I mean if question begging is a nice way to describe what 
happens when two sides make naked assertions and unsupported claims against 
each other's value system, then I think the MOQ avoids it quite nicely. I'm 
still thinking that this kind of question-begging is part of the soupiness 
problem and that the MOQ's hierarchy is very handy framework for sorting 
these things out.

Maybe its just that I'm a student of history and a junky of news, but LILA 
gives me the very distinct impression that Pirsig is interested in lowering 
the death rate. I think a hierarchy like Wilber's and Pirsig's is an 
important part of the diagnosis. I mean, if the goal is to understand the 
conflicts between worldviews and value systems, the ones that have led to so 
much unpleasantness for the last century, then I think such distinctions are 
extremely valuable.

Thanks.
dmb

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