[MD] MOQ Recursion

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Ron,

Ron said:
The axiom [of non-contradiction] is an intellectual agreement. A kind 
of criteria for intellectual quality.

Matt:
The only thing I'd want to emphasize is that it is _a_ criteria.  One 
hang-up I think some people have about "the intellect," why they 
want to speak of its inadequacy, is that they think paradox is useful. 
 This occasionally gets expressed as mysticism being outside 
intellectual description, or similar maneuvers.  But by understanding 
the axioms of the intellectual level--axioms/criteria that are, in a 
sense, constitutive of the intellectual level--as _agreements_, you've 
moved to a position of understanding the intellect as a normative, 
value-positioning.  The only thing left, then, is to redescribe the 
functions of the intellectual level to reflect this understanding of the 
intellectual level.  And doing this would involve a microexplanation of 
how paradox functions _at_ the intellectual level, not outside it (Pirsig 
led the way with "mu").  It is _that_ step that I think is being 
neglected when people wish to treat the intellectual level as 
constituted by the subject/object distinction.  (I can't be sure about 
this neglect, however, because I have been unsuccessful in trying to 
understand just what specific individuals who are attracted to this 
avenue of explication think they mean.  This is just a suspicion on 
my part.  I don't have a lot to back it up.)

Matt