[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, Horse, All

Weekend comes and May empties her "out" tray ;-)  

> Andre owes Marsha a public apology. The only generous explanation I can
> come up with for his attacks on her is to imagine that he was drunk or
> high on crack at the time.  I really hope this is so, because otherwise
> he was just showing his rear end in public. 

Andre is an  ...... and his drooling a nuisance, but every village must 
have one ;-) 

Horse had said: 
> > Or misinterpretation neither liberal or otherwise. The only
> > fundamentalism going on here is Bo's (and by argument and
> > association yours and Marsha's) self-fundamentalist view that he's
> > right and anyone who disagrees is wrong - including Pirsig!. Another
> > phrase that comes to mind, with respect to this
> > (mis-)interpretation, is bloody-minded.

[Mary Replies] 
> Yeah, you're right.  Bo, you're not doing your arguments any service
> by brow beating people with it.  In fact, when I think about the
> dynamics of the group, it occurs to me that your blustering may have
> given others license to sink as low as they did that week.

Bodvar:
Point taking, yet hadn't it been for me, the MOQ (as understood by this 
group) would have been an esoteric good for nothing theory. When we 
know what odd subjects PhDs "treat", to speak about the MOQ 
"having a foot inside academy" means next to nothing.  

Horse (I believe) 
> > Not as I and the majority here and Pirsig understand it and it has
> > nothing to do with fundamentalism. Pirsig is not saying that prior
> > to 5th century BC Athenian civilisation (SOM) there was no
> > intellectual level.

Wrong, Pirsig says that the social level had NOT been transcended at 
Homer's time (a way of saying that the intellectual level hadn't been 
reached)  Homer's time is Aretê's heyday when mythological demigods 
of colossal emotions roamed the Greek countryside. Then came SOM 
- or the intellectual level - however not suddenly with Heraclitus & Co. - 
this was the coming to a head of something that had brewed for 
centuries. Its said that the "Iliad" is totally myth-centered while the 
"Odyssey" shows traces of "modernity" of SOM, of Intellect!     

> >  He is saying that thinking is an intellectual activity and pre-dates
> > SOM. 

In intellect's heyday - as SOM - it wanted us to regard "intellect" as 
thinking itself, thus the litmus test of having understood the MOQ 
(where intellect is a mere static level) is to see that the 4th. level 
inherited thinking from the social level which in its time had inherited it 
from biology. 

Horse:
> > This also undermines your and Bo's idea that SOM is the
> > Intellectual
> > level (what you and Bo would see as science and philosophy etc.)
> > because it existed prior to these as is pointed out in the above
> > section of Lila - "....intellect has functions that pre-date science
> > and philosophy [SOM]". How obvious is that? So how can SOM be the
> > Intellectual level when intellect, intelligence, thinking etc. all
> > existed before these were around?????
 
[Mary Replies] 
> Horse, you have argued yourself into an untenable position. of course
> thinking existed prior to SOM. 

Right, even horses think in the biological - turning of mental (called) 
wheels - sense.

Bodvar