[MD] Relativism

[skutvik at online.no]

Ron 

24 May

Ron wrote: 
> What I fail to understand is what greater explainitory power it brings
> to science or as you like to call it, the intellectual level. How does
> SOL provide greater explainitory power to science? Bodvar can never
> answer this question, he usually insists that MoQ is reality and that
> DQ/SQ IS the fundemental split. 

I have done nothing BUT try to explain the power of the SOL 
interpretation over the last ten years. However it adds no extra power 
to the intellectual level or to science, but to the MOQ when the 
intellectual level is seen in its proper SOM role. 

The non-SOL-ists still cling to some SOM-like "intellect" where ideas 
reside, oblivious of Pirsig having refuted it. Anyway, the resolutions of 
the platypis that LILA promises are lame because they are based on 
the said mind-intellect (that Pirsig later rejected). For instance the 
mind/body enigma where he says that it is due to the missing social 
level between "mind" and "body". We see here that he equates the 
4th. level with "mind" and the 1 st. & 2 nd. with "body", but how the 3rd. 
level helps isn't clear.  

The MOQ does dissolves all platypis by the S/O distinction being seen 
as the 4th. level's value. This in the same sense that (Newtonian) 
physics dissolved the Ancient Greek physics' paradoxes. You know 
"Achilles and the Turtle" example? Xenon argued logically that Achilles 
never could overtake a turtle if it was given a head start. We smile at 
this but it vas not until Newton and Leibnitz that this problem was - 
again - not solved but dissolved. 

Until the MOQ people couldn't find out how mental thoughts could act 
upon the physical body, the fact that it happened before their eyes did 
not help much. The MOQ makes this problem dissolve because the 
thought/body (mind/matter) distinction only exist on the intellectual 
level .... IS the intellectual level. 

Ron:
> How does MoQ dissolve those paradoxes? by making subject and object
> static, correct?

Yes by seeing that what we call thoughts does not take place in some 
mental compartment called "mind" different from the real world, but 
that this distinction is the static intellectual level's VALUE. 
d no longer sure of d 
> If both subject and object are static, 

Subjects and objects came to be very late in the intellectual level's 
development towards becoming SOM. It all began (as told in ZAMM) 
with the early Greek thinkers beginning to look for something eternal - 
imperishable, they saw that people, animals, everything were subject 
to change, decay and death ... and no longer trusting the mythological 
(social) explanation. They called it "eternal principles" and this resulted 
in the first grand principle - TRUTH - which necessarily required an 
Untrue counterpoint, and the first SOM "embryo" was conceived. From 
then on the question was WHAT is true and what is false ... need I 
lecture  ... at least it ended with Aristotle declaring "Substance" to be 
the true part and "Form" the false - short-lived - one. And ZAMM says 
the modern SOM is born.      

> how does this differ from the Objective notion that thoughts are
> biologically explainable, Indeed, Subject IS object. 

If you refer to my assertion that thinking - intelligence - emerged with 
brain?  OK, from intellect's mind/matter premises - AKA SOM - we will 
insist that all neural activity goes on at the subjective plane, but the 
biological level has no S/O so this has no meaning, a dog or a bird 
have no inkling of their manipulation of symbols is subjective, nor have 
we when all levels except the biological are disconnected  - when 
sleeping and dreaming we don't know that we dream. So again the 
mind/matter distinction exists only at the intellectual level. It's an 
immense static value but disaster as existence's fundament - as SOM!

And this is a much as I can manage.

Bodvar

























   




> 
> 
> Mary:    
> 
> > I see again and again how we are all talking past each other.  Would
> > this be a good time to back up and refer to the original question?
> > "What makes the Intellectual Level different from the Social?"  If
> > we can't answer that, then we can't define the level; and, if we
> > have to conclude that there are no discernable differences between
> > the Social and the Intellectual, then why did Pirsig include it?
> > Maybe it's all just one big Social Level?  Would that idea float
> > anybody's boat?  Maybe John's?
> 
> Ron:
> Lila ch.24
> "What is the purpose of all this intellectual knowledge? the
> metaphysics of Quality answers,"  the fundemental purpose of knowledge
> is to dynamically improve and preserve society."
> "Intellect can support static patterns of society without fear of
> domination by carefully distinguishing those moral issues that are
> social-biological from those that are intellectual-social and making
> sure there is no encroachment either way."
> "whats good is freedom from domination by any static pattern."


> 
> > Ron, I mean, I didn't make up the rules - Pirsig did.  He clearly
> > defined the four levels as a hierarchy of values/morals.  He says
> > each successive level originated in the one below.  He explains how
> > they are all composed of static patterns of value - latched in
> > response to Dynamic Quality - yet are all in a state of continual
> > tension with each other.  I don't mean to be pedantic here, but to
> > answer the question we need to be starting out on the same page and
> > with all the too-ing and fro-ing in the forum, I'm not sure that we
> > are.  Are these all the basic premises we have?  There's one more,
> > but to my surprise I got flack for saying it a while back.  This
> > puzzles me, so if someone would like to argue it out, we could start
> > here. Pirsig said the levels are discrete sets of patterns of value
> > that took off on a purpose of their own from their parent.  I think
> > this is pretty clear from the literature, but someone, and sorry,
> > but I don't remember who, took issue with this. 
> 
> Ron:
> It all depends on how you interpret it, he says that evolution is a
> high quality idea, he says that we may understand experience abit
> better if we broke it down into four levels rather than two. If you
> interpet the levels in terms of objective existant fundemental
> constituants of reality which emerge out of each other, then your
> understanding is going to be a bit different than what others believe
> Pirsig is saying.
> 
> Pirsig states that the levels, morally take off on their own, but , it
> is useful and grounding to understand the point of departure and basic
> purposes " but it doesent mean children should assassinate their
> parents and it doesent mean intellectuals have to assassinate
> society." the point is that they have drifted and gotten lost.
> 
> 
> 
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