[MD] Intellectual Level

[John Carl]

Ian,

I had a rather long response to you on my thumb drive from the Ridge, but
alas, it all got corrupted and lost somehow in the translation.  We'll just
have to live without it, I guess.  No great loss.

I'll have to recreate the important gist and try again.  The main thing I
was speaking to, that I remember, is the idea that there is always  hope in
"mere" conversation, even when that conversation is limited to only two.

Here's to looking ahead to hopeful conversation in 2011.

John



On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 1:49 AM, Ian Glendinning
<ian.glendinning at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks for the Borges quote John.
> "Rather than saying that the paradoxes indicate that the rational
> world is 'false', I would say that they indicate that it is
> *incomplete* -- that there is more to reality than meets the eye."
>
> I completely agree. I ignored Platt's question because (a) the answer
> is no mystery, and (b) Platt is just leading us back to the pointless
> "incompleteness" angle on intellect. Pointless because of the Bo /
> Platt / SOL history - where no matter how many times any of us point
> out this is a positive benefit of the MoQ view to absorb a less
> exclusive view into intellect, GOF-SOM-Intellectuals still see only a
> problem - wilfully IMHO.
>
> (My take is simply that some people prefer disagreement to progress,
> and Horse has taken up the progress challenge, which is fine with me.)
>
> Ian
>
> On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 6:20 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Platt, Ian and Marsha,
> >
> >  my reading this morn coincides with your discussion.   I offer you  in
> > support of the idea that paradoxes are not anti-intellectual, but in
> fact,
> > quite the opposite:
> >
> > "The very existence of a paradox can be used to derive some interesting
> > facts about the relationship between the mind and the universe.  No one
> has
> > made such a derivation as boldly as Borges: 'We (the undivided divinity
> > operating within us) have dreamt the world.  We have dreamt it as firm,
> > mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and durable in time; but in its
> > architecture we have allowed tenuous and external crevices of unreason
> > which tell us it is false'. ... Rather than saying that the paradoxes
> > indicate that the rational world is 'false', I would say that they
> indicate
> > that it is *incomplete* -- that there is more to reality than meets the
> > eye."
> >
> > Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind, p 95, quoting Borges from Avatars of
> the
> > Tortoise in *Labyrinths*.
> >
> > John in a hurry, wishing all a happy new year,
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 9:22 AM, Platt Holden <plattholden at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Well Ian, if you find a way intellect can avoid paradox or infinite
> >> regress,
> >> I hope you will share your discovery. (I don't think intellect includes
> >> intuitive or other nonconceptual experiences.)
> >>
> >>
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