[MD] Intellectual activity

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
Finally, Arlo likes to claim he doesn't come down on one side or another in 
so-called dichotomies like individual/collective, good/evil, 
liberal/conservative, etc. Yet, in focusing on the interplay of the 
individual/collective, he can't help but raise a interplay/isolate 
dichotomy. I think it was Plato who observed that things are only known by 
their opposites, like we would have no concept of one without the  many. In 
other words, dichotomies are built into the warp and woof of the 
intellectual level. Pirsig is not exception. His philosophy requires the 
dichotomy of dynamic/static to makes sense.

[Arlo]
To clarify, I don't believe there is an "interplay/isolate" dichotomy. The 
Yin and Yang, for example, are only rhetorically "dichotomous" because 
without one the other would not exist. As for dichotomies are useful 
analytic-rhetorical tools, I think they can be used this way, so long as 
said dichotomy is always remembered to be nothing more than one rhetorical 
slice of the knife, and not representative of the way "things" actually 
are. Furthermore, my issue is with those who make a rhetorical dichotomy, 
and then pair it with Absolute Good and Absolute Evil. In this case, to 
worship the Individual and vilify the collective is to miss the important, 
dialectical value of each.

Finally, my read of Pirsig leads me to believe he'd be the first to say 
that the  Dynamic-static "dichotomy" is, while useful, a rhetorical 
dichotomy of a whole where neither Dynamic nor static could exist without 
the other, and from whose co-relation both attain value.

[Platt]
I think I know how the objection to hard and fast dichotomies arises. It's 
almost a given among humanities professors that nothing is absolutely true 
-- that truth consists of shades of grey. At the same time they hold that 
shades of grey are absolutely true, thus contradicting their own assertion. 
Either that or they tumble into the mad abyss of infinite regress.

[Arlo]
Another jab at the Academy. Damn those villainous "humanities professors"! 
Why can't they think more like Rush Limbaugh, who sees the world clearly 
and correctly?

Intellectual patterns, whether metaphysical or mathematics, are never 
"absolutely true", they are culturally-derived symbolic-metaphorical ways 
of describing experience. Is the MOQ, for example, "absolutely true"? 
Consider Pirsig,

"Unlike subject-object metaphysics the Metaphysics of Quality does not 
insist on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be 
the ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of things - 
that which corresponds to the "objective" world-and all other constructions 
are unreal. But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality 
then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one 
doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest quality 
intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is 
any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as 
useful until something better comes along. One can then examine 
intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings in an art 
gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the "real" painting, 
but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value. There are many sets 
of intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some to have more 
quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, the result of our 
history and current patterns of values."

Arlo