[MD] The 4th. level's two interpretations. Part 1

[mark_maxwell at talktalk.net]

All MD

Either MOQ's intellectual level is
1) = SOM, or
2) = what SOM means by "intellect" - "mind"

Squonk: Hello Bo,
Mind and intellect are not the same thing.


Bo: (1) avoids SOM.


Squonk: This means: SOM avoids SOM. I’ll leave it at that.

Bo: If intellect is pursued far enough its social roots will show.

Squonk: Think of it this way Bo…
Imagine Social patterns are money loans, and Intellectual patterns are 
Derivatives.
Money loans can be said to do good for people because they help them achieve 
their social goals, like owning a house or a car. Derivatives, on the other 
hand, make money from money only.
There are no ‘roots’ that Derivatives sink into; Derivatives play 
 by their own rules.

Bo: How it "..can carry on the MOQ is by the same token.
That way it no longer is "a loose gun on deck" that Pirsig's way of encasing SOM 
is (the two lower levels = objects and the two upper = subjects).

Squonk: Subjects and Objects do exist
The problem isn’t that they exist, the problems begin when it is assumed that 
this is all there is.

Bo: (Side note to Squonk: "what SOM means by 'intellect'" _is_ what the > MoQ means 
by spov and ipov.


Squonk: You are making the mistake of equating ‘Mind’ with ‘Intellect’ again.
Intellect is ipov only.
Spov + ipov = Mind.
Therefore, Mind = Subject.

Bo: SOL claims that SOM is the 4th. Q-level, whil
 e "orthodoxy" claims that 
SOM is ONE intellectual pattern.


Squonk: Because Intellect is ipov only, and not Mind.

Bo: As the 4th. level SOM's "M" is removed, only the value of REASON (the 
ability to distinguish between what's objective from what's subjective) remains.

Squonk: Metaphysics is an intellectual activity. Here’s the clue: S/O is the product of an ‘intellectual activity’, in this case, the one called REASON; An intellectual art form; an aesthetic relationship between intellectual patterns.

Bo: The 4th. level will stop being provider of ultimate metaphysical-philosophical 
"truths" ... and that's pretty revolutionary ...no?

Squonk: It’s

pretty mistaken. Truth is an intellectual value, and intellect
  does not equate 
to mind.

Bo: (2) is the interpretation in which we recognize that though there are 
certain phenomena that remain the same (intellectual, social, biological, 
inorganic stuff), the interpretation of these phenomena is not set in stone, but 
optional - we can arrange them differently if we like.

Like, say into the MoQ. Well, then problem is what "remains the same" regarding 
the 4th level i.e. intellect's static value?

Squonk: What ‘remains the same’ is aesthetic value.

Bo: You Matt are from when Paul Turner wrote to Pirsig about the problematic 
4th. level. He at least got a vehement rejection of the "mind" or "thinking" de
 finition and than a statement that "... it gives little me
 aning to the speak of 
any 4th. level before the old Greeks thinkers." (=SOM) but then Pirsig obviously 
felt that this was giving SOL the little finger and launched the "manipulation 
of symbols" definition, but as this is language the MOQ water were even more 
mucked.


Squonk: Remember the symbolic/hyper symbolic approach?
And now the Money/Derivative analogy?
You need to get onto the dislocation between social language and abstracted 
symbols.


Bo: Look to the most central Q-tenet of the upper level's purpose to control the 
parent level. Manipulation of symbols can by no stretch of imagination be seen 
as controlling social value (besides the social level manipulates 
 symbols galore by language and calculation.

Squo
 nk: Calculation is not a social activity, it is an intellectual one.
And here is your answer: Intellectual activities like calculation are valued 
socially for the quality of life they bring via technology etc.


Bo: No, the only things that controls society is intellect =SOM and all the 
intellectual patterns LILA lists are S/O-ish to the core.


Squonk: Abstract symbols are neither subjects nor objects. ‘Knowledge is Power’.

Bo: I guess the above rhetorical question about (1) is what I've never 
understood, and might be said to be the primary problem facing such a thesis. 
Was Pirsig just promoting self-consciousness?

Squonk: Reason asserts truth over good.

Bo: What about all that stuff _in_ ZMM deriding 
 the paradigm he was excavating, 
deriding materialism, the S/O Dilemma that SOM produces, deriding dialectic, 
deriding the fact that we'll do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good?

Squonk: Truth leads to the fetishism of self, and this alienates people from 
each other, and their own being.

Bo: Yes, Pirsg's books carry (1) and (2) in equal amounts, but my claim is that 
that only (1) supports the MOQ.


Squonk: Both 1. and 2. are your own interpretations. They both suffer from the 
same flaws: Intellect equates to mind.

All the best,
squonk