[MD] The SOL-ution

[Heather Perella]

     [Ham]
> While I believe you're right that the MOQ is an
> "abstract construct", I
> don't think a philosophy has to be, especially if
> it's a cosmology.  No
> doubt a theory is an "intellectual construct", and
> to arrive at it requires
> some abstractive thought processes; but is the
> theory itself necessarily an
> abstraction?   For example, when Copernicus
> hypothesized that the earth and
> planets revolve around the sun, was this an
> abstraction?   

     A more exact abstraction according to today's
intellectual understanding.


     [Ham]
> When Galileo
> later provided scientific proof (using a telescope
> and astronomical
> measurements), was he confirming an abstraction or a
> theory?

     Both.  Galileo and these planets are involved.


     [Ham]
> I am a literalist who happens to believe that
> objects are abstractions --
> that they are intellectually derived from value; so,
> epistemologically, the
> physical universe may be considered an abstraction. 
> But this doesn't make
> the cosmology itself an abstraction -- or does it? 
> (I trust you can see the
> ambiguity of this term.)


     Is this all in the head versus all out there,
talk?  Don't quite understand what your saying here.

     [Ham] 
> The point I was trying to make was that Pirsig's
> heirarchy of levels is
> arbitrary in that it attempts to make disparate
> things -- objects, society,
> intellect -- equate with Quality.

     Ah, the point.  They are arbitrary.  Subjects and
objects are arbitrary.  I just see the level system as
an effort to define subjects and objects more
definitively, as Pirsig states, more staticly, but
static doesn't mean absolutely permanent or absolutely
impermanent due to this bugger in which Pirsig liked
to call dq.  Static is not absolutely permanent due to
obvious change (ex. seasons).  Static is not
absolutely impermanent due to obvious holding still,
i.e. static latching, (ex. a tree).  This kind of way
in defining static quality is due to sq not latching
dq, yet, the effort is present for it's all quality.  
   


     [Ham]
> That is not only
> an abstraction, but a
> perversion of common sense.

     What is common sense?


     [Ham]
> It forces us to
> redefine the meaning of society
> into something like "the organ of mankind",

     What is the organ of mankind?  Where did you get
this definition?

    [Ham]
> and intellect as its "collective
> mind", with the result that the individual loses its
> significance.

     What is collective mind?  Where did this
definition come from?


     [Ham]
> This is abhorrent to me, because I believe in an
> anthropocentric universe in which
> value is proprietary to the individual.  I suspect
> that Bo, and possibly
> Laird and a few others here, hold to a similar
> philosophy but are
> constrained by the multi-level theory in their
> efforts to articulate it.

     How does this multi-level theory constrain the
individual?


very light drizzle,
SA
     


 
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