[MD] Another parallel

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Bodvar --


I'm still not sure I fully understand your position with the MoQ, especially 
as it concerns the human intellect.

On July 13 DMB posed this question to you:

> If the 4th level is SOM, then William James, John Dewey,
> John Stuhr, Sandra Rosenthal, Hegel, Heidegger and a whole
> host of other philosophers must have been using something
> other than intellectual patterns when they criticized SOM as
> a philosophical problem.  On what basis can one offer a
> critique of SOM, if not an intellectual basis?

You replied:

> The said philosophers may well have realized problems with the
> subject/object dualism, but does any of these use the term SOM?
> I doubt it, because in that case they would have understood the
> possibility of a new - none S/O - metaphysics and none of these
> undertook that task. James spoke about the "undifferentiated ...etc"
> that may look like DQ, but then pitted this against mind (concepts)
> which isn't what Phaedrus of ZAMM did, he said SOM (mind/matter)
> was Quality's fallout ... and called it "intellect" .. for your 
> information!

To my knowledge, Pirsig is the only philosopher who has coined the term SOM 
as a "metaphysical system".  David is using this term to denote the 
subject/object dualism of experience and intellectual thought, as we all do. 
This is not metaphysics but the universal structure of human knowledge, both 
scientific and conceptual.  You don't have a metaphysics until you posit 
something like Being, Energy, Spirit, or Value as the fundamental essence of 
reality, as Pirsig tried to do with Quality.

"Quality's fallout" or intellect's failure notwithstanding, even a monistic 
source must account for difference (i.e., mind/matter, subject/object) if 
the metaphysical thesis is to hold water.  Unless your position is that 
intellect (intelligence?) is the perception of difference, I can't 
understand the substance of your argument.  As David suggested, by adhering 
to an evolutionist theory of intellectual development you are denying 
intellect to anyone who does not acknowledge SO duality.

> Your problem is the intelligence-intellect confusion. For intellect to
> emerge it had to start with someone "critical" to social value - from
> social premises - but as intellect flourished the social premise lost
> ground, it was "denied" and - again -.  James, Dewey, Stuhr ...etc.
> were surely critical to the subject/object configuration, but none have
> identified a SOM, much less presented a new metaphysics where
> SOM is a subset - the intellectual as Phaedrus of ZAMM did.

What is "the social premise"?  That human subjectivity is a collective 
intellect as opposed to individuals capable of thinking for themselves?

> And dear Dave, the MOQ must well "deny intellect" in order for the 4th.
> level to become a MOQ subset, not the other way round. But it does
> not deny INTELLIGENCE and this shows that DQ is part and parcel of
> the MOQ."Where was Quality before the MOQ point to it...etc .

How do you distinguish "intelligence" from "intellect"?  My dictionary 
defines intellect as "the capacity for rational or intelligent thought, esp. 
when highly developed."  Intelligence is "the ability to apply knowledge or 
to think abstractly."  I see very little difference between these 
definitions, and they both relate exclusively to human thinking.

Again, I am mystified by this intellectual chasm you impute to an "MOQ 
subset".  It would seem to me that universal knowledge as supported by 
individual experience is intellectually sufficient to establish existence as 
an S/O division.

> Thus spoke  Bodvar
>
> End of part 1

I can only hope that Part II will enlighten us as to the point of your 
argument.

Best regards,
Ham