[MD] Consciousness

[ml]

Merry Christmas yourself, Bo...
and any others who celebrate
regardless of belief.


<snip>
> mel:
> > I only address mind, intellect, and its fellow travelers when I see
> > what seem to be counter- productive wastes of energy, and direction.
>
> ????  Too deep.
>
> > If you underestimate what intellegence is, you risk failing to
> > understand its limits and that is an invitation to build a bridge too
> > short to cross the canyon, leaving you on one side.
>  Bo:
> Me underestimating intelligence? You must be joking Mel, but the thing
> is that intelligence is NOT intellect, but something that occurred at the
> biological level with the growing neural system (brain) and increasing
> in step with the primate's big brain, reaching a peak with the Homo
> species neocortex layer. The point is that animals can learn new
> tecniques - pass them on (I think this is what you said to Platt) all in
all
> be pretty smart without any notion that this manipulation of stored
> (RAM) experience is "thinking" or  taking place in a subjective mind
> different from objective matter.This chasm is INTELLECT!!! But in
> between comes the social level so enough for now.

mel:
Ah, the use of "you" in the above paragraph was editorial and
not specific to you-as-a-person, but anyone who makes the
intellect a god.

The quicksand territory of mind is bigger than merely intellect.

Intellegence may not be intellect, but intellegence coupled with
memory and shared experience instantiates INTELLECT. My
appproach (and this may be key to our disagreement) is from
the unfolding consciousness of the individual--the most certain
place we live.  You can be tossed from your society, a stroke
can remove you from access to intellect and memory and all
that is left is consciousness of the moment at some level...


<snip>
Bo:
> You may be such a profound MOQ scholar that I don't manage to
> follow, but what provoked me was your uttering about INTELLECT
> being more than the S/O (Reason and Science) because THAT is not
> understanding the 4th level. Transforming it into something mind-like
> is poison. This is what I call the "intelligence pitfall".
>

mel:
The thing I have done since 1974 or 75, since I first read Pirsig
 has been to keep notebooks of my explorations of consciousness.
>From my trying on of Husserl, to the temporary molds and casts
of mind in the structure of philosophers and thinkers and then into
places that "kicked free" of those chains: sharma practice, martial
arts and other "patterns"

Upon reading Lila, my notebooks filled with the untangling of
much of my past "learning" as I traced the way we in America
have balled up bio-social-intel without a clear vision of how
and why they so often fit together uncomfortably.  I have
studied political thought in general, and due to the proclivities of
those who guided my university experience the Marxist-Socialist
thinkers in particular.

Scholar?  No, but serious explorer? Yes.

We, all of us, are hampered by a lack of immediacy in our
communication, lack of visual display, which I use extensively
in most communication, and differing sensibilities in the use
of English.   The specificity of exclusionary meanings of the
same word from area-of-specialty to area-of-specialty may
make the same term greatly divergent if not outright
antagonistic.  And our structured backgrounds are obscured.

So, our frequent inability to follow ine another owes more to
that than anything else.



mel earlier:
> > The Dynamic runs two directions.  It is not a simple binary.
>
>Bo:
 Who says the Dynamic component of reality itself runs in any
> direction? It causes a static evolution towards betterness.

mel:
This is from my many readings of Pirsig.



<snip>
Bo:
>
> If the levels aren't static what's the purpose of Pirsig dividing reality
> that way? That each level is an accretion of earlier levels is plain. So
is
> it that it's response is according to its "structure". In other word the
> various levels' structures  are STATIC responses. No need to make it
> so damn complicated. As said by some prophet: "If you want to be
> good don't yelp about God" There's far to much yelping about "DQ" at
> this discussion. The levels are static, but the level shift was as Pirsig
> describes it "DQ taking advantage" of an ambiguous pattern of the
> lower level to form the next.

mel:
My understanding of what I read from RMP is a more
stairstep structure than merely blocks atop each other.
More forward and more upward are more dynamic
in effect.

I don't see that he 'divided' reality, but rather described
the 'human' reality according to a continuum of quality.


Bo:
> The internal evolution however is my present concern ...??

mel:
We may be closer in our efforts than the fog-of-words might
indicate.  The variant 'light' from the different places we stand
in the world, may lead us all to see the appearances of
structures and patterns as having different limits.



<snip>
Bo:
> I admit that MOQ's relationship with itself is where we are at the end of
> our tethers, but one thing is for sure: The intellectual level is an MOQ
> subset, by no twist of logic can the MOQ be an intellectual sub-set,
> thus the MOQ somehow is outside its static range. By the way what
> the "metaphysics" term means.

mel:
I think we are in overall agreement on this point, but I would use the
language differently...maybe it's more style than substance as I
reread you earlier paragraph.



> Bo:
> > > This interpretation is called the SOL and have been promoted by this
> > > person for years and years as the only way to look upon the
intellectual
> > > level that harmonizes ZAMM and LILA and makes the MOQ one solid
> > > unassailable edifice.
>
> mel:
> > The oddly ironic part is, it seemed to me that (BO was) you were caught
> > in a mind-intellect vortex, as it appeared to me, by power-welding
> > Subjective-Objective onto the intellectual level.
>
Bo:
> Only if you equate intellect with mind. But please elaborate.

mel:
Have you anywhere as a single work elucidated your SOL?

Considering in a 'set theory' manner, I do see intellection as a
subset of mind as a subset of consciousness (collective) Not
UNION, but definitely INTERSECTING...if that makes sense.

There is a difference between
the process of...
and
the results of...

Bo:
> No, no annoyance at all, it's just me having been with this for more
> than ten years and IMO seeing the same "pitfalls" encountered ...The
> MOQ is a mighty new metaphysics, but its explanatory power rests
> with the intellectual level being limited to its intended S/O pattern. If
it
> is expanded to a dynamic mental mindish realm the MOQ is just
> another - more complicated - SOM.

mel:
All explorers of a new territory must experience it for themselves.
And if the 'pitfall' is there it can't be understood without at least
a close look, so please be patient...

thanks again--mel


<snip>