[MD] MOQ Recursion

[X Acto]

Hi Matt,

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.)

Ron:
I think you touch on an interesting subject because it would seem
there would be reasons to value paradox. For example as a reaction
to the social pressures of performance in a rigidly defined environment.
I think most of us have experienced it as type of release from those
expectations. An intellectual justification to not take those expectations
too seriously.
I can see it taken to extremes in a symbolic way to represent the
struggle of the individual with society.