[MD] The Mythos-Logos issue.

[Ham Priday]

Bo, Joe, and All --

On 7/2/10 11:11 PM, "skutvik at online.no" wrote:

> Every single instance where MOQ wields its explanatory power
> is based on the SOL, any other of the many strange definitions
> - f.ex. "expansion of rationality" - is useless. For further examples
> of its power I can point to its clearing up of the age old problem
> of EVIL by its level system, each level in turn creating a new evil
> and finally - by revealing this context - the MOQ at least explains it.
> A problem that has bothered humankind for ages, resolved in one
> stroke of genius, no small feat!  Another related enigma is how
> murder brings medals in war, but is a crime in times of peace. ...
> The MOQ explains this as when the intellectual latch doen't hold
> we slip down to the much stronger social latch where "our cause"
> takes over and where no qualms exist by killing the enemy.
> But this also requires the SOM-intellect, the Mind-intellect has
> zero explanatory power.

Joe Maurer, responding on 7/3:

> Your example of an intellectual latch not holding is intriguing!
> I do not see that evolution is under the control of an individual.
> When hysteria or patriotism necessarily overpowers an
> intellectual formation I don¹t view that as failing intellect so much
> as I view it as a DQ level of self-preservation supplanting a SQ
> static intellectual latch of military order. The DQ individual in an
> emergency is not held accountable for an SQ intellectual
> formulation. ...
> Social causes frequently produce hysterical behavior, and
> I am suspicious of a social level in evolution.

The more I read of the "war between the levels" with "static latching" as 
its mediator, the less I am inclined to take Pirsig seriously.  My 
disillusionment has nothing to do with Bo's peculiar interpretation of 
"intellect"--indeed, many interpretations prevail here--but I am astounded 
that the levels paradigm has been accepted so literally that "evil" and 
"goodness" are alleged to be products of evolution.

Where in this cacophony of levels and patterns is the free agent who 
realizes what is of value and acts accordingly?  Of what moral value is 
"explanatory power" if the reality we're attempting to understand is devoid 
of human sensibility?

MoQ's author considered subject/object duality so problematic that it drove 
him to replace it with a Quality hierarchy.  The solution that Bo and others 
regard as "a stroke of genius" was to devise a four-level evolutionary 
system that defies epistemology and is fraught with more problems than 
duality ever posed, not the least of which is incomprehensibility.

When I see uniquely human capabilites like intellect, reason, 
conceptualization,.moral judgment, and value appreciation surreptitiously 
"dehumanized" as universal patterns simply to accommodate a euphemistic 
paradigm, I can't help but question the very sanity of it all.

I'm reminded of that famous line by Sir Walter Scott: "Oh what a tangled web 
we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"   Please, somebody, tell me 
that I'm not alone in this quandary.

Happy Independence Day!

--Ham