[MD] Keep on Duckin'

[Jan-Anders Andersson]

Thanks Dave

I liked that.

Our brains are all different, inorganically, organicallly, mentally and educationally.

In Syria today, people get shot because they have another view on intellectual values. I think it's a bad method to solve the conflict. Dialogue, where both parts are talking AND listening is better.

Jan-Anders

"For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance."  Leviathan ch XIII.


12 maj 2011 kl. 21.06 skrev moq_discuss-request at lists.moqtalk.org:

> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 12:11:17 -0600
> From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Subject: [MD] Keep on Duckin'
> Message-ID: <SNT139-w99F76A6C0160BF027EDF5DA890 at phx.gbl>
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> 
> 
> Arlo said to Marsha:
> .., intellect exists to free people from social chains. A MOQ recognizes the necessity of maintaining a foundation, however, and not dismantling the stable patterns of value that support the emerging agency made possible by structure.  ...But if you think the mouse or amoeba is somehow 'freer' than you, less imprisoned, or otherwise unencumbered by chains, then by all means, Marsha, I fully encourage you to abandon all patterns.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> Well, I suppose it's futile to try to talk sense with a person with thinks static patterns of quality are both ever-changing AND a kind of prison. It's a cage made of clouds, apparently. It's like trying to discuss water with someone who thinks ice is hot and steamy. Even Sarah Palin would blush at this level of incoherence. 
> 
> In the MOQ, static patterns are not a prison. They are the world as we know it, arranged in an evolutionary moral hierarchy. They are static patterns of VALUE, of QUALITY. 
> Marsha had said:I not only agree with Mark that language is a kind of prison, but I also think patterns are a kind of prison."To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality, which is undefinable, one's behavior is free." [LILA}
> 
> dmb says:
> Yea, but in the very next line, Pirsig says, "The MOQ has much much more to say about ethics, however, than simple resolution of the Free Will vs. Determinism controversy. The MOQ says ..VALUE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL GROUND STUFF OF THE WORLD..." (LILA 156)
> He is saying "that not just life, but EVERYTHING, IS AN ETHICAL ACTIVITY" (LILA 157) "What the evolutionary structure of the MOQ shows is that there is not just one moral system. There are many." (LILA 158) "But in the MOQ all these sets of morals, plus another Dynamic morality, are not only real, they are the whole thing." (LILA 159) "A human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence over a society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of evolution than social patterns of value." (LILA 160) "...: societies and thoughts and principles themselves are no more than sets of static patterns. ...Does Lila have Quality? ...Evolutionary morality just splits that whole question open like a watermelon." (LILA 161)
> Pirsig goes well beyond the free will thing and wholly rejects the SOM view that morals are "just subjective. He puts traditional morals in perspective, in a larger context, saying that it is a relatively narrow brand of morality and largely represents the conflict between biological values and social values. This expanded framework is used to answer the question of Lila's Quality. It's used to describe the MOQ's conception of the self as a complex ecology of static patterns, the constitution of which defines the limits of one's ability to respond to DQ. And I think you can see by the continuous page numbers that Pirsig is continuously expanding this ethical picture to explain what he means by saying these sets of morals are not only real, they are, along with DQ, the whole thing.
> And that's what Mark and Marsha condemn as a kind of prison? That's a rather ghastly reversal. What could be more starkly different than the MOQ's assertion that life and everything else is an ethical activity? Static patterns of quality are the bars of cage? Static patterns of value are worthless? A species of the good is a kind of evil? Yea, well I guess that goes along with saying static patterns are ever-changing and ice is defined by its liquidity. But it's not just that it makes a huge mess of things conceptually. It's not just incorrect or nonsensical, like saying two plus two equals blew. It's also a moral nightmare. In the MOQ, anti-intellectualism is a rejection of the highest level of static quality. It is a condemnation of the most evolved set of moral patterns. It's wrong both technically and ethically.
> He finishes the chapter explaining that the whole 20th century has been a "struggle between social and intellectual patterns". He's talking about politics and war, religion and science, and the conventional realities right here on earth. Many chapters are devoted to this kind of socio-political discussions. It seems very hard to believe that Pirsig would spend all that time developing a moral hierarchy and an ethical analysis just to condemn it all. His root expansion of rationality was aimed at increasing the square footage of his prison cell? Not likely. 
> No, this evolutionary morality is supposed to split the book's central question open "like a watermelon". Lila does and does not have Quality. Biologically, she does, but she's intellectually nowhere and pretty far down the scale socially, Pirsig says. She's got the Dynamic thing going on, but in a dangerous, unZen sort of way. Rigel is the social level prig and the the captain is the intellectual. Rigel and the captain don't bomb each other's cities, but we can see a personal version of the social-intellectual conflict in their relationship, or lack thereof. 
> Is this not what the book is about? Lila gives us a full-blown set of ideas. It's still built around the undefined DQ but it's also full of nuts and bolts. It has a coherent structure and a point a purpose. It's hardly ever appropriate to invoke "not this, not that" when we're talking metaphysics or discussing a published text. Those things ARE intellectually knowable and they are not supposed to be ineffable.