[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

DMB, Khoo, All

23 May:

DMB had said:
> The intellect can produce any number of metaphysical systems. SOM and
> the MOQ are two such systems and they can hang next to countless other
> painting, as in the art gallery analogy. In that analogy, equating
> intellect with SOM is like equating one of the paintings with the
> whole gallery in which it hangs. It would be like equating Catholicism
> with the whole social level, like saying lions are the biological
> level or equating gold with the whole inorganic level. The scope and
> meaning of SOM is inflated wildly out of proportion when it is equated
> with the intellect. It eliminates all of the other elements, all of
> the other life forms, all of the other religions and all of the other
> intellectual visions. It would eliminate all non-SOM philosophies and
> that means eliminating the MOQ. When Pirsig said Bo's theory
> undermines the MOQ, I think he was being a bit too euphemistic and
> polite about.

Khoo:
> This is about as strong a refutation of the SOL as the QI argument as
> I have ever seen stated boldy and without reservation. There are
> 84,000 ways to meditate. Take your pick. 


It's embarrassing how easily fooled you are Khoo. DMB says "the 
intellect can produce any number ... etc."  this is just another way of 
saying that mind can produce any number of thoughts. Must I remind 
you two of MOQ rejecting both matter and mind. Pirsig spends much 
time in LILA to prove that inorganic value isn't what SOM calls "matter" 
and one may infer that intellectual value has nothing to do with "mind". 
The 4th. intellectual level is STATIC, hence its master-pattern is 
limited (the sub-sets may be countless) and the only limitation - if one 
leaves SOM - is SOM itself and this is what gives the MOQ its 
enormous explanatory power. The tragedy is that DMB hasn't left SOM 
and sticks to its use of the term "intellect" which is thinking itself, 
meaning that all ideas from Stone Age onwards have been intellectual 
patterns. This leaves the MOQ in total shambles.       

Bodvar