[MD] Consciousness

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Mel

23 Dec. 

Bo had spoken:
> > 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 had replied:
> 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.

Bo goes on:
Regarding "making intellect a god" puzzles me considerably. Ham 
keeps harping on me making intellect something special, while I 
maintain that the 4th. level is what the MOQ must degrade to a mere 
static level, no more dynamic than the rest.    

> 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. 

What exactly is "mind" in a metaphysics that rejects the mind/matter 
distinction? Regarding "intelligence"it is something very basic 
emerging with brain, animals (still 2nd. level) clearly think in the draw 
intelligent conclusions sense (in their non-linguistic ways) The stories 
of their feats are innumerable. 

"Intelligence coupled with memory"? IMO intelligence IS to fetch stored 
experience (memory) manipulate it (what intellect calls abstract 
scenarios. If your "shared experience" is hort for the social level, yes, 
the intellectual level will be the next static Quality step.    

> 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... 

Yes, consciousness used in this "level perception" way I agree with 
completely, but the said term is often used in the grand SELF-
CONSCIOUS sense.

Bo earlier:
> > 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.

Wow, you read ZAMM before me (in 1978) and if you were as early 
reading LILA (published 1991) I had expected you to use the MOQ 
terms more frequently, at least let is shine through that you used - for 
instance "consciousness" in the said "level perception" sense, 
because (as said to KO) the the grand self-consciousness is SOM's 
(IMO the 4th.level's) invention; That of a "homunculus" inside our 
heads, monitoring everything, even self, hence self-conscious.    


               On the static (intra-level) evolution question.


> 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.

(Quality) Reality is Static/Dynamic-divided from the outset, to postulate 
a super-Quality which remains unscathed  behind is untenable. 
Further, Q-evolution isn't towards DQ, but towards better SQ. So about 
the higher levels more dynamic than the lower ...I question. In their 
turn all level have been leading edge and what DQ tried to overcome 
and now the 4th. level is the "battleground" yes, but its static 
resistance is as fierce as the time when life emerged from matter.
       
> I don't see that he 'divided' reality ...
 
Again, the static component of the (Quality)reality is quality too so in 
that sense agreement, yet, Pirsig does divide Quality, that's for sure.   

> ....but rather described the 'human' reality according to a continuum
> of quality. 

Man's or humankind's view has no place in the MOQ. Quality is 
reality's ground and as such "disembodied".  

Bo had said earlier:
> > 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:
> Have you anywhere as a single work elucidated your SOL?

Yes, it's at the moq.org. homepage (well hidden) 

http://www.moq.org/forum/Skutvik/solupdate/solupdate.html

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...

Wise words.

See you

Bo