[MD] expanded rationality

[MarshaV]

Hi Ant,

While I am waiting for the full paper on 'Enhanced Rationality' to be available, I would like to ask for your understanding of 180-degrees enlightenment, why you see it as representing what I wrote and why that would make my definition of expanded rationality wrong?  Also, why would you think 'expanded rationality' is confined specifically to a scientific orientation?

Thanks Anthony.


Marsha






On Jun 5, 2012, at 9:44 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

> 
> Marsha V stated June 1st:
> 
> 
>> Greetings,
>> 
>> First revision:
>> 
>> Once one accepts the MoQ's fundamental truth that the world is nothing but Value, then 'expanded rationality' occurs when an individual transforms the natural tendency to reify self and world into the natural tendency to hold all static patterns of value to be hypothetical.
>> 
>> What do you think?
>> 
>> 
> 
> Marsha, 
> 
> You seem to be talking more about 180 degrees enlightenment in the above paragraph.  I always thought "expanded rationality" _ as far as the MOQ is concerned - is more about reconciling the aesthetic and the spiritual within scientific orientated thought.  A new essay (by John McConnell) that is due to appear on robertpirsig.org during this month has an interesting take on this issue.  I've pasted a preview of some of John's essay below for your interest,
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Ant
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Enhanced Rationality
> 
> 
> 
>          If we
> accept the premise that rationality as we know it developed historically from a
> deliberate and collective abdication of control of thought to the intellect,
> then it follows that the repair of the resulting defect in rationality lies in
> willfully seizing back the initiative and repossessing what we
> relinquished.  That's a tall order!  We are, in effect, requiring our intellect to
> "cut its own switch".  We are
> asking nothing less than that it assist us to derive a concept of it that
> brings its rule to an end.  We are
> confronted with the formidable bootstrapping operation of compelling
> rationality to construct radical reconstructive surgery upon itself.
> 
> 
> 
>          Let us
> begin by assuming an altered perspective that places us conceptually outside of
> that which we wish to construct.  Then
> having constructed it, we may by a deliberate act of intuition enter into it and gain the advantage over intellect.
> 
> 
> 
>          First, we
> need a new name for this new form of rationality, a name that characterizes it
> metaphorically and evokes the imagery that will draw us into it.  That name is inspirationality[1].  To inspire means "to breathe
> into".  Connotations of the root it
> shares with the word "spirit" also pervade the word.  Hence, the word inspirationality suggests
> the idea of rationality with the breath of life breathed into it; rationality
> infused with spirit.
> 
> 
> 
>          The
> "Prime Directive" of inspirationality is that it must
> reintegrate "the Good" with "the True", thus closing the
> wound that was wrought by Platonic thought. 
> The contemporary philosopher Nelson Murdoch has observed, "The true
> isn't True unless it's Good."  He would also doubtless affirm the
> corollary:  "The good can't
> be Good unless it's True." 
> Good has two connotations,
> both of which are valid in this context - ethical Good, or Right, and aesthetic Good, or Beauty.  The pivotal term Right can also mean True!
> The very ambiguity of these terms should suggest their fundamental
> inseparability.  Hence, an act that is
> "wrong" or "ugly" cannot be the product of an inspirational
> thought process.  To put it another way
> (and to derive another term), success gained by a "dyspirational"
> process cannot succeed.
> 
> 
> 
>          The
> reintegration of True with Good is mediated through the
> cultivation of the experience of Quality. 
> We find ourselves somewhat retarded in that skill only because we have
> neglected, or deliberately suppressed, the faculty of mind by which Quality is
> perceived and experienced.
> 
> 
> 
>          Bergson
> believed that intuition in the intelligent creature is a dim, vanishing
> remnant of the instinctive mode. 
> Nonetheless, he ascribed to it great importance and power.  In Introduction
> to Metaphysics he constantly referred to it as the instrument by which we
> may enter willfully into a primary empathetic knowledge of anything, a
> knowledge, as it were, from within a
> thing.  He had perhaps, therefore, come
> to share my belief that we possess a submerged faculty of mind - call it
> "intuition", "right-brain", "subconscious",
> "Superconscious", or whatever you will - that is the beginning of
> something, not the vanishing of it.  We
> carry within us the "seedling" of a more advanced form of knowledge than either instinct or intellect.  Evolution never goes backward.  We cannot seek to return to "the good
> old days" before the intellect emerged. 
> We must see where the advancing front of life and consciousness are
> going and willfully align our hearts and minds with it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     [1]This name
> was "given" to me; I did not invent it.  If I had, I would have spelled it with two r's
> - "inspirrationality" - to make it less ambiguous.  But upon reflection, it is clear that the
> ambiguity was deliberate.  It is intended
> to convey a concept that is not clearly defined and has numerous connotations
> of the related terms "inspiration" and
> "inspirational".  So I have
> recorded it as it was given, and in all subsequent essays of this series I
> shall use it as given.  Its spelling and
> the attendant confusion with "inspiration" shall stand, as directed.
> 
> 
> .
> 
> 
> 
> ___
> 
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