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

[mark_maxwell at talktalk.net]

Marsha:
Explain what democracy stands for and how is it manipulated?
I do believe manipulation is a requirement.

Hi Marsha,
The intellectual pattern, ‘Democracy’ is hyper-symbolic, that is to say, this symbol does not represent an object.
‘Cat’ represents a cat; it is learned socially to symbolise cats.
‘Democracy’ is an abstracted social symbol - a hypothetical collective. Note there is no actual collective, but there are particular collectives. The hypothetical collective ‘Democracy’ can be applied to particular existing social collectives.
The process of abstraction may be thought of as the manipulation of symbols.
　
Marsha before:
The fourth-level, the Intellectual (som) Level, grew out of the third-level, the Social Level.

Squonk:
This statement relies upon the fallacious belief that intellectual values do not include subjects or objects.

Marsha:
Huh? Intellectual static patterns of value bifurcate into a formalized subject and object, so I do not understand your above sentence.

Squonk:
I’ve provided an example of an intellectual pattern that is not a subject or an object.
Therefore, your statement here has been challenged:
Either,
1. The intellectual level grew out of the social level and then developed patterns that are not SOM, or
2. The relationship between the social level and the intellectual level does not conform to the organic metaphor, ‘grew out of’.
IMHO both these destroy your position. I happen to prefer 2. Because I feel the process of abstraction does not conform well to a ‘grew out of’ metaphor. I think this metaphor is employed when the term ‘roots’ is applied, but abstraction forms a dislocation between the levels of symbols; roots form a continuity.
If this dislocation didn’t exist, RMP’s insistence that the levels are ‘discrete’ would be undermined.

Marsha:
Fallacious? What are you applying the word fallacious to?

Squonk:
The ‘belief’.

Marsha before:
My point was that the MoQ is an intellectual pattern that explains, as best an intellectual pattern can, the Quality Level, which has gone beyond, beyond, beyond it.

Squonk:
There is no such thing as ‘the Quality level’ in the moq.

Marsha:
But I am saying that for clarifying purposes, there should be Quality Level.

Squonk:
I think your suggestion introduces confusion because it is unnecessary.
I think it is unnecessary because your reasoning has a fallacious argument in it.
The fallacious argument is that the intellectual level does not have patterns that are not subjects and objects.

Marsha:
On this fact, I agree with Bo. The difference between the intellectual s/o understanding of the fourth level and the MoQ's Quality understanding is so great that it warrants a new emerging level.

Squonk:
I would agree had this view not been acutely challenged.

Marsha:
And RMP's objection was not a forceful declaration.

Squonk:
In my experience RMP does not make forceful declarations. He is too good a rhetorician to have to. Why be forceful when you can be subtle?

Marsha before:
Niels "Bohr says, "We are suspended in language," the Metaphysics of Quality completely agrees." (SODV) That is because our language has been built with a view of reality as being subject/object oriented.

Squonk:
The moq says that language can be either:
1. Imitated, in which case it is social, or
2. Abstracted, in which case it is intellectual.
Therefore, we may be suspended in two distinct realms of linguistic functions: the social or the intellectual.

Marsha:
I doubt that Niels Bohr was talking about gossiping with his neighbour, or brushing his teeth.

Squonk:
I would not be so sure about that.
He didn’t say, ‘We are suspended in language. Well, most of it’ did he?

Marsha:
As I have explained my point-of-view before, the subject/object language in the social level is unconscious, while in the Intellectual Level the subject/object split is formalized into an aspect of reality and participates in the manipulation of the symbol.

Squonk:
Please forgive me if I have missed some of your reasoning; I’ve not been around for a while, not even as a lurker (I tend not to lurk).
If I understand you right, you are suggesting that social language differentiates between subjects and objects, and this differentiation infects the intellectual level when it manipulates symbols.
In other words, the symbols the intellect manipulates already refer to subjects and objects, and the intellect differentiates further on this basis.
This view does not accord with the suggestion that early Greek culture did not differentiate between the self and other people very well, if at all, while simultaneously employing cosmology, Geometry and Mathematics.
I think you should note at this point that Bo has avoided tackling this very question like the plague. He is free to do this.

Squonk:
Our Intellectual language repertoire is larger than reference to subjects and objects. IMHO it can therefore accommodate both S/O metaphysics and a metaphysics based upon a non-dualistic approach, i.e. the moq.

Marsha:
The Intellectual patterns used in explaining the MoQ participate in objectifying and manipulating the abstract concepts being explained.

Squonk:
I think this is clearly not the case. Would that it where, because it would support your position.
Values are not subjects or objects. If they were then the moq would be a version of the very metaphysics it states it is opposed to.

All the best,
squonk