[MD] Junk Stuff

[David Thomas]

All,

A few days ago I indicated that I was done with trying to understand
Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality because of the "kludges" he's used to fix
errors in his thinking. But for some reason I just couldn't completely let
go. Not that "moving on" just for a few days has not been productive.(I'll
try and put my insights together later)

But, I want to start where I left off with the "intellect" response to P
Turner.

>     Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect,"
>     that can mean thought about anything and the word,
>     "intellectual," where abstract thought itself is of primary
>     importance. Thus, though it may be assumed that the
>     Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had intellect, it can be
>     doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture.


This is a kludge of the first order. The first use of kludge is in 1962
article by Jackson W. Granholm's 1962 "How to Design a Kludge", which
appeared in the American computer magazine Datamation. He used it to mean,
'An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing
whole'.  This to my mind is the current status of the MoQ. The original
appearance of "kludge" in the 1989 version of the Oxford English Dictionary
ends with: 'Kludge' eventually came to mean 'not so smart' or 'pretty
ridiculous'.

IMHO Pirsig's attempt to separate the word "intellect" from "intellectual"
by claiming "intellect is thought about anything" is both 'not so smart' and
'pretty ridiculous'.  Go to Google and type in the phase "What is the
intellect?" and you will find about 6,480,000 results and I challenge anyone
to find a reference in recent philosophical thought that claims, "intellect"
means "thoughts about anything" while "intellectual" is "abstract thought
itself.."

>Google hit #1: Definitions of intellect on Web:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&defl=en&q=define:intelle
ct&sa=X&ei=LGldTLXMCobksQPwm92pCw&ved=0CBIQkAE

>Intellect-The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/intellect

>New Advent-Catholic Encylopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08066a.htm

>The Neglect of the Intellect: Sloth by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
http://radicalacademy.com/adlersloth.htm

Pirsig's claim is verfied way way back. Guess where? Bo and all SOLer's will
love this. 

>Aristotle on Thinking (Noêsis)
http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/433/AristotleThinking.pdf

Pirsig traces the birth of SOM to Aristotle rails against him and sets his
goal as:

> "In any event, he said, no one was really accepted in Chicago until he¹d
>rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle got his." (ZaMM 202)

Then when pushed by Turner, he claims we, the "subtly confused" readers,
forgot Aristotle's take on "thinking" with "Passive intellect." and "Active
intellect." Of course that is the only acceptable philosophical account of
what the "intellect" really is. Boy, RMP sure gave it to Aristotle.

A fitting ending to this silliness is item 735 where even Google gives up:

>THEOparadaox
http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/

The MoQ Apostate

Dave

C) KLUDGE#3 Quasi-Religious Dynamic Quality & Mysticism.
> [DMB in Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy]
> Some relevant comments from the Copleston annotations:
> 180 "The MOQ supports religion but does not support many Christian
> traditions."
> 193 "Quality is nature. The MOQ says there is no spiritual principle in man
> that makes knowledge possible. Nature does the whole job."
> 208 "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is completely
> dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic
> freedom. The MOQ is not just atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."
> 216 "Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality
> succeeds where Bradley's Absolute and Hegel's Being and the Buddhist
> Nothingness and the Hindu Oneness and the theists' God and Allah and
> you-name-it, all of them fail. For Quality, no faith is required because there
> is no way you can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality. You cannot
> conceive of or live in a world in which nothing is better than anything else."
> 228 "The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality
> stuff, a willingness to believe falsehoods."
> 235 "When you hear the words 'spirit' and 'faith' always look for a
> traditional religionist trying to sneak his goods in the back door. ...like
> the positivists, the MOQ drops spirit and faith, cold."



> The Metaphysics of Quality associates religious mysticism with Dynamic Quality
> but it would certainly be a mistake to think that the Metaphysics of Quality
> endorses the static beliefs of any particular religious sect. (Lila pg 175)

(An Aside)
I will admit that part of my problem with Pirsig on this issue is ego based.
I've spent the majority of my life as a designer and believe that designing
is, in part, an intellectual activity. A very ancient one, maybe as, or more
ancient than language. Under the MoQ, design is either not an intellectual
activity or it only emerged as one after the Classic Greek period. I believe
that both premises are wrong.

> "Designers...are forever bound to treat as real that which exists only in the
> imagined future and have to specify (find or create) ways in which the
> foreseen thing can be made to exist." (J Christopher Jones-Design Methods)

Intellectual culture of the Iglulik Eskimos
by Knud Rasmussen.