[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[skutvik at online.no]

Dave T.

A last effort to bring you to your senses.

26 March you said:
 
> in·tel·lect 
> 1 a : the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and
> to will 

Right: ".... as distinguished from the power to feel and to will." "Feeling" 
is clearly Q-social. What "will" is? My Oxford says "instincts" which is 
biology. Thus INTELLECT is the power of rising above emotions & 
instincts and that is also called Rationality.       

> in·tel·li·gence 
> 1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or
> trying situations

OK. this is the ability to adapt to new situations and that starts in the 
biological realm.  

> Intellect (which as far as we know is exclusively a human quality) is
> limited by definition to "the power of knowing". 

"Knowing" is far too wide. To know how to flay a bison or make a flint 
tool is clearly not intellect or rationality.   

> Intelligence, on the other hand, is not limited exclusively to humans
> or to just the "power of knowing." You have previously agreed that
> animals have intelligence. So intellect is a human quality that
> evolved, emerged, and transcends animal intelligence. 
 
Agree.

>  You would like to limited intellect, this "power of knowing", to
> "rationality" and further to solely the subject and object
> distinction. 

The rational - OBJECTIVE - attitude needs a scapegoat  and that is 
represented by "subjective" which means total dismissal. This did not 
spring ready-made into existence but evolved from the 
Truth/Appearance distinction as described in ZAMM.    

> You keep pointing to the ZaMM diagram that shows a box
> labeled "Quality" (undefined) split below into two boxes labeled
> Classic Knowledge and Romantic Knowledge. You mistakenly transfer the
> Classic box (with its subject object sub-boxes) directly to the MoQ
> equating it to the static intellectual level.  Wrong! 

It's not me but Pirsig who makes Classic Quality = INTELLECT!

> If the intellect is "the power of knowing" 

As said, it's not mere "how to" knowledge, but knowing objective from 
subjective, and that's worlds apart.  

> and we have in ZaMM "Classic Knowledge" and "Romantic Knowledge" 

We have Romantic and Classic QUALITY!  

> isn't it reasonable to conclude that  both of these types of "knowings"
> would be included in the MoQ intellectual (knowing) level.  

Again, Pirsig made Romantic Quality = "preintellectual reality" and 
Classic Quality = "intellectual reality" the latter divides into 
subject/object so it's plain that Intellect was meant to be SOM in his 
original vision. And how much trouble would he have spared if the had 
been true to this in LILA. 

> In fact it is one of the major insights that RMP had. Intellect is not
> solely a manipulator of subjects and objects but the highest, best,
> tool we have to order, symbolize, and yes manufacture abstract patterns
> quality. 

Manipulator of subjects and objects?! How awkward and what will to 
misunderstand you display. Intellect is the tremendous value of the 
objective - rational - approach. It has given us modernity, but it also 
created a bleak value-less reality while intellect-as-SOM ruled. This is 
what the MOQ puts right, but to do that the illness must be isolated to 
intellect in its SOM role. A mind-like intellect that contains "ideas" - 
SOM one idea and the MOQ another idea - just makes the MOQ a 
(SOM-) idealist movement and nothing is gained.. 

Bodvar