[MD] What all is about.

[Peter Corteen]

Hi Bo,

you refer to the Muslim world as a social level culture that has not adopted
intellect as it's focus.
This is a touchy subject and you are brave to say that.
I'm not sure you are right though your words certainly resonate.
The Muslim world has produced fantastic architecture and art over the
centuries and, of course, they have given much to mathematics also; all of
these require intellect.
I am not a Muslim but my impression of their way of life is one of very
strong social pressures where it is barely possible to even consider that
Allah may be a myth as that in itself would be enough to guarantee your
oblivion; they could argue with the non-believer but never really consider
their point of view.

It's a growing force, a true giant; I hear of Westerners converting to Islam
but I never heard of an ex-Muslim.

Many Westerners are the same though; those later-day, born again Christian
saints; Julian Jaynes in his 'Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind' said that this possibility of hearing a voice inside
your head as if it were not your own was due to a different brain structure.


The brain can change though.

Regards

-Peter

On 05/11/2007, skutvik at online.no <skutvik at online.no> wrote:
>
> Ham and interested parties
>
> 4 Nov. you wrote:
>
> > I'm glad the discussion has been productive for you.
>
> I'll give you credit for helping me see the Archimedean Point. As
> an outspoken somist you are clearer on that "point" than many of
> the self-appointed moqists.
>
> > I mean you have dug yourself into the hole that Pirsig carefully
> > avoided; namely, positing Intellect as an ideation source that
> > transcends the individual.
>
> But at times you sound like an Old Peoples' Home inmate
> repeating things regardless of your room mate's argument. And
> can anything be said without "transcending the individual", i.e.
> assuming that there is a reality greater than individual who
> speaks about it? Even in SOM this is impossible.
>
> > The SO dichotomy may be paradoxical, bit it's a dilemma only for those
> > who insist on an existential reality.  Quality is not alone in being
> > exclusively neither mind nor matter; this is also true of Freedom,
> > Excellence, Beauty, Love, Balance, Goodness, Integrity, Harmony,
> > Symmetry, Magnificence, and dozens of other attributions, even
> > Consciousness itself.  Must we regard them all as Quality?
>
> A most valid point Ham. I have been dubious regarding the
> Quality part (Reality=Reality or Reality=Quality don't seem so
> important) and have seen the Dynamic/Static divide as the
> crucial part, but Pirsig's point is that existence is an evolution
> towards the better and in that sense Quality is BEST. I combine
> Quality and D/S by seeing the DQ/DQ  as MOQ's first postulate.
>
> More valid points. There are several concepts that escape the
> S/O matrix, and as a veteran of this site you will remember how
> many MO -Xs that have been proposed, but as all just copies the
> MOQ Quality is the mother of them all.
>
> Re. Harmony which was Poincare's ultimate, Pirsig saw this as
> equal to his own Quality
>
>      But we know from Phædrus' metaphysics that the
>     harmony Poincaré talked about is not subjective. It is the
>     source of subjects and objects and exists in an anterior
>     relationship to them. It is not capricious, it is the force that
>     opposes capriciousness; the ordering principle of all
>     scientific and mathematical thought which destroys
>     capriciousness, and without which no scientific thought
>     can proceed. (ZAMM)
>
> P. had not spotted the SOM at this time - not to speak of
> formulating a MOQ - he sees "scientific thought" as his
> antagonist and his task to be that of uniting science and art
>
> > As your new header implies, the point is that existence is a
> > differentiated "all".  Everything in it is a being-made-aware--an
> > object perceived subjectively.  In other words, Existence = SOM.  All
> > is about the relation between individuated sensibility and
> > differentiated otherness.
>
> If SOM poses no problem why bother, but you seem like having
> passed all philosophy by since Aristotles. The empiricists,
> Berkeley who found that "everything exists in our mind only".
> Immanuel Kant who believed he came to common sense's
> rescue (that there is a S/O, not only S) but ended with postulating
> a reality (Das Ding an Sich) out there, completely ineffable.
> Modern physics still worse solipsisms. Is this no problem?
>
> > The MOQers want to make Existence their
> > reality by pretending that there are no differences--that everything
> > is a category, level, or pattern of something arbitrarily labeled
> > Quality.  But differences do not go away, subject and object do not
> > merge in experience, space and duration do not vanish from the
> > universe, my awareness and values do not become your awareness and
> > values.
>
> Well, again, a DQ/SQ metaphysics makes sense of everything
> SOM makes enigmatic . The said differences are not supposed to
> go away, they are the 4th. level's values! To see your awareness
> as different from mine, subject from object, matter from mind ..
> etc is the highest Quality there is, but the enigmas that intellect -
> as SOM - creates is (in the MOQ) due to the fact that it's a static
> level, not reality's ground.
>
> > Whatever the Stone Agers conceptualized was as "intellectual" as
> > anything we conceptualize today.  To say they were not intellectuals
> > is a subjective judgment based on when you think "intellectuality"
> > came on the scene.  How do you know there were no skeptics in the
> > Stone Age?   There was no language by which to communicate skepticism.
> >  Also, what do you mean by "these weren't theories about reality,
> > rather reality itself"?   And Muslims are "latter day social-level
> > people"??     What on earth does that mean?
>
> This argument you can't counter without a lot of nonsense that
> you KNOW is nonsense. Ancient people had language and the
> terms to communicate truthfulness from lies but did not know the
> OBJECTIVE TRUTH different from MERE OPINION dichotomy,
> this capacity arrived with the Greeks as SOM  ... as intellect with
> Pirsig.
>
> With Aristotles the term "metaphysics" became a theory ABOUT
> reality. A dichotomy unknown to the said Stone Ager.
>
> The Muslim world as a "stone age" (social level) culture in the
> sense of not having adapted intellect as their focus. Europe and
> Christendom was like that before the Greek "spirit" - SOM or
> Intellect - recovered from the Medieval hiatus.
>
> It's all this that gives the MOQ its enormous explanatory power
> and leaves SOM behind in its paradoxical dust. But if your sole
> mission is to say "no" to it all ...phew. I'm not asking you to leave
> dear Ham, you philosophize at least.
>
> Bo
>
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