[MD] Moving On

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Folks (#4 of the day).

I'm disappointed that recent discussions all lead back to definitions
of intellect, or rather not that they lead back there, but that they
remain a fixation, a block to leading anywhere else.
One of the reasons I was always happy to work with Bo's arguments
(even though I didn't agree with his conclusions) was that it was
about the nub of our problem.

I've never been about precisely documenting the MoQ, any better than
Pirsig had already written about it. I continue to be about doing
something with the MoQ to improve how human minds - mine included -
inhabit the world. Improve, progress, as in better, as in good. (I
respect that others have different aims and motivations.)

My thesis is quite simple.

When Pirsig was writing about intellect he was writing about intellect
as it had become, post-enlightenment, classical objective rational
intellect. I have no doubt this is what Pirsig means by intellect, and
I have no doubt that kind of intellect is what is "reified" in the
level of Intellectual SPV's. (But lets not add arguments about  the
definition of reified to those about the definition of intellect.)
This is all I mean by GOF-Intellect.

Pirsig's point was that there is something beyond that. The MoQ way of
thinking - where the world also involves radical empirical experiences
- pre-conceptual - that is we know them before any attempt to
conceptualize them (and exchange emails using words). And we know the
value if using them in the real world without needing to conceptualize
and define them - they are forever poorly defined in any
GOF-Intellectual sense - but valuable. (Things that were already well
known to non-intellectual schools of thought, like Zen Buddhism for
example.)

The exiting thing for me has been that this is so consistent with
everything written on evolved brains and minds since Pirsig originally
wrote.
Read Iain McGilchrist "Master and Emissary"
Read "Thinking Fast and Slow"
Read Jonathan Haidt "The Righteous Mind"
Listen to Bryan Appleyard and Iain McGilchrist
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/the-divided-mind.aspx

The depressing thing about MD is being stuck in "intellectual" debates
about "intellect".
No one is anti GOF-Intellect, I simply know we all believe there is
something more, because none of us can find a definition we can agree
on ? For me that's a good thing. That's why we appreciated Pirsig's
work.

I don't want to see the debate limited, or the wonder of MoQ "reduced"
in any reductionist way - but we have to "get over ourselves".

Ian