[MD] The 4th. level's two interpretations. Part 2

[skutvik at online.no]

Ian 

29 Oct. you wrote

> You quote (yet again, for the umpteenth time)

    "For purposes of MOQ precision let's say that the intellectual 
    level is the same as mind...."("Lila's Child" page 64, 
    annotation:#25)  

> Yes, we know, Bo, but he says "let's say" ... he's thinking out loud
> in a  discussion here ... it is hardly definitive of his
> thought-through thesis.  

OK, I'll gladly give him that, and it was also plain touching when Pirsig 
closed the letter to Paul Turner by saying: "This is no Papal Bull, but 
perhaps just bull ..." 

Matt had said:
> "... deriding the fact that we'll do what is reasonable even when it
> isn't any good?" 

> I know Matt has a thing about Pirsig being "pejorative" about existing
> philosoph(olog)ies, hence his "deriding", but this is the crucial
> point. Reasonable vs Good (and what intellect has to do with this) -
> see later. 

> And again Bo, you said, this time to Matt - but condemning us all as
> usual ... "But like most you seem unable to fathom what the
> intellectual level is, namely when the individual's perception became
> SUBJECTIVE and what s/he perceived became OBJECTIVE meaning that this
> distinction is existence's fundament."

> Became. Notice.
> OK, I'm OK with that, it's an evolutionary narrative we're talking
> about here, and this is simply Pirsig's definition of the intellectual
> level arising, not anything fundamental about intellect per se. And
> the key point is the (erroneous) reification of the S/O split as
> somehow fundamental.

Right, Ian, the 4th level created a new S/O=M reality. You may not be 
so keen on the "Oriental Intellect" issue, but listen: In the PT letter 
Pirsig suggested that the Upanishads era was an Oriental intellectual 
level but that it was "non-S/O" one. 

OK, let's say that their Vedic-Upanishads transition spelt their social-
intellectual on. Some Indian philosophers (also) began a quest for 
something "objective" beyond the social-mythological reality (which 
would be deemed "subjective" had this development continued) but 
then - before any Oriental Socrates, Plato or Aristotle - they went on to 
a Quality-like stage. Now, this Upanishads era would still be the 
intellectual level  .....but it would be S/O .... only it would not have 
developed into a SOM. 
               
Ian contd..
> I actually think you are onto something with one point here, but you
> miss the difficulties others are raising. Yes the social level also
> involve(d/s) patterns of subjects and objects - all that the step to
> the SOMist intellectual levels indicates is the point where the
> objective half of that split got taken to be fundamental reality from
> the subjects perspective. 

Hmmm. The social level involved individual with names, identities, 
property, everything, but the "subject/object" aggregate is Q-intellect  
And what do you mean by "... objective half [..] taken to be 
fundamental reality from the subjects perspective." The subject/object 
perspective IS intellect's perspective, while the added  "..taken to be 
fundamental" is SOM!!!. We are close Ian, I hope this is just nit-picking 

> I have never had any disagreement with you over this interpretation of
> the MoQ levels. My problem is that it does not tell us anything useful
> about the hierarchical goodness of social and intellectual patterns in
> real life - now and in future. If anything it implies this kind of
> intellect is always worse than any social pattern

As per ZAMM SOM was a fall from Aretê=Quality grace. For some 
reason Pirsig refuses to translate ZAMM into moqish, but it's plain that 
the Aretê era was the social level's heyday  and SOM was the 
intellectual level's emergence. The ill effects, however is caused by the 
development from mere S/O to SOM, i.e. the subject becoming an 
isolated "mind in a vat" irredeemable closed off from other minds and 
from its world. The intellectual level however is an immense value and 
rightfully the highest and best.         

> - the Platteral anti-intellectual stance - which is clearly too
> simplistic, as well as useless - the "crucial" point above. It doesn't
> help us say how and when social (or intellectual) is better than
> intelectual (or social) - when is reasonable also good (or not)?

Platt is OK, he merely points to intellects "over-debunking" of social 
values resulting in social nightmares, this resulting from all level's 
ignorance of being "levels dependent on their parent level", but looks 
upon the past as an evil that cannot be debunked enough. With the 
advent of the MOQ - that reveals the Q-context - and us humans now 
not only being of all static levels, but also of MOQ's meta-level.  

> (I'm less interested than others in debating the eastern/western
> mythology of when the Greeks or others before or after, actually
> introduced that error - since it is clearly much more complex than
> something Plato wrote one day - all ideas evolve, co-creatively, over
> time in many minds, individual and collective, intellectual and
> cutural - and philosophical - traditions and mythologies. They're in
> safe hands with Dave, and Matt et al.)

Wish you would not have written this Ian. I thought you were about to 
understand, but this is back in SOM-land where ideas emerge in 
minds, SOM one idea the MOQ another .... and so on "ad infinitum"   

Bodvar