[MD] Intellectual Discussion and Dialectic - Finding agreement, Quality and beauty in the world.

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[David]
That there's a created dichotomy between values and intellectual consistency doesn't mean that we ought to support just one or the other. 

[Arlo]
I disagree. "Consistency" IS a value. It is not 'after-value' or opposed to value or something like this. Supporting intellectual consistency is really nothing more than supporting intellectual quality. Of course, "consistency" is not the only intellectual value. Pirsig lists several others, and I think we in an overall totality its all of these things together that make a sort of total quality for whatever idea is being presented. 

[David]
I'm pointing to that point *before* we begin talking consistency and validity.

[Arlo]
Which is fine, and there are many "Zen" and/or various "art" discussion forums all over the Internet. I'm sure in the vast majority of poetry groups, for example, Marsha would not be called out for inconsistency or incoherence. But this is a philosophy forum, David, or at least it is 'by name'. The purpose of this forum IS intellectual quality. I mean, intellectual quality MATTERS. Crafting an idea is no different than crafting a painting or building a rotisserie. Of all places, you think intellectual quality would be most important here. Instead, many seem to think jettisoning the entire idea of an intellectual quality in favor of a banal relativism is the way to go.

[David]
Yes. Consistency and validity are created by the values of interlocutor.

[Arlo]
Well, no (I think). Consistency and validity are intellectual values. To be sure, intellectual value emerges from the social level, and as such (langua)culture and histories are the ground from which intellectual descriptions grow. But they are not 'created' by an interlocutor in any decontextualized or non-experiential way. I'd say we do not so much 'create' consistency as we 'recognize' it. 

[David]
There are no 'false' ideas.  There is no one 'true' answer.  Just a whole bunch of quality ideas.  Some of them good.  Some of them not so good.

[Arlo]
I'm not sure who you think is being attacked for "false" ideas as presented against the backdrop of "one true answer". I see only arguments being put forth showing the very low quality of some. And I also see a lot of baiting and frustrations, repetitions and passive-aggressive socializations. 

Also be clear about one thing, Marsha doesn't want this to end. She wants the attention. You watch, if DMB goes for more than ten days without responding to her posts, the frequency by which she reposts "I define static patterns as..." increases significantly. If you look at the archives, there's periods where she reposts the same copied paragraph six times in four days, until finally DMB calls her out on it again, and they do their back and forth, and Marsha gets to play poor Lila, the hero being assaulted by the mean old intellectual, again for a few days, and then its rinse and repeat. Watch for it. Simply track the posts DMB makes in reply to her and compare those to the posts she copies and pastes her "definition". As one goes down, the other goes up (one of the benefits of an archived forum is that you can run corpus programs on the posts). 

[David]
But really the goal is Quality, not truth. Don't you agree?

[Arlo]
Of course. But again, in THIS forum, are we talking about intellectual quality, social quality, pre-intellectual quality (and if this, then should we drop the "MOQ" designation and make it a 'zen-art-koan' type forum?)?

[David previously]
"Hi Marsha and Arlo, *Why* do you value the idea that patterns constantly change and the the intellectual level is made up of butterflies and candy apples?  Please show me why those ideas are good? I'm open to those ideas being better than what I think.. "

[Arlo responded]
Is that how Pirsig responded to the Chairman?

[David]
I'm glad you raised this because it's a great example of exactly what I'm talking about..

[Arlo]
I don't see your point from the passages you posted. You'll have to explain this to me. How does Pirsig's response to the Chairman correlate with your "I'm open to these ideas being better than what I think..."? 

[David]
Please point out to me where you see me condemning dmb more than Marsha? I don't see it. 

[Arlo]
Fair enough. It seemed to read that way to me (including Ian's interjections), but if I am wrong then I withdraw the complaint.

[David]
I just also happen to think that there's a reason why the disagreement between them has continued for so long relatively unchanged. 

[Arlo]
Of course there is. And of course its not an intellectual-philosophical reason. It has nothing to do with opportunities to present ideas, or "one true answer", or anything else I think you can "fix" with appeals with intellectual quality. You can't say "present your case" at this point because its been presented dozens of times, and that is part of the problem. It'd be charitable to say its a mismatch in use of the forum, a conflict between 'forum as philosophy group' and 'forum as social club', but that's one way of framing it.  

[David]
Of course we would. But does that solve anything? Does the person your calling stupid suddenly become intelligent by your saying it?

[Arlo]
Well my comment about the Buddha saying "that's just fucking stupid" is calling the idea, not the person, "fucking stupid". Just to be clear. But no, it doesn't solve anything so much as mark a point where intellectual quality has broken down to a point where it no longer applies. You can't 'reason' with someone who is fixing their beliefs tenaciously, it just doesn't work. You can try, and you can try again, but until the person you're talking to is interested in applying reason then reason isn't going to do anything. And, if the person you're talking to is coming from an 'anti-reason' point, then reason not only will be ineffective, it will reinforce the anti-reason position rather than weaken it. 

[David]
Our goal is Quality - not truth and I rarely agree with Ian - but on this I do - 'We all seem to be saying that Quality is the goal but few of us have actually changed our behaviour to match this stated goal.'

[Arlo]
I might agree up to the point where abandoning intellectual quality is seen as mandatory to reach the goal of Quality (I'm assuming you're using "Quality" here as an overall (IBSI Quality) and not "Dynamic Quality"). Indeed, I'd restate the comment as this (and ask you what you think the difference is).

'We all seem to be saying that intellectual Quality is the goal but few of us have actually changed our behaviour to match this stated goal.'

If intellectual quality is the goal, what are the milestones to reach that goal? If not consistency and validity (and the other ones mentioned by Pirsig), then what?

Or is this what you and Ian mean, 'We all seem to be saying that social Quality is the goal but few of us have actually changed our behaviour to match this stated goal.'

Fair enough. I have neighbors that insist on mowing their lawn at 7am on Saturdays. I bite my tongue because I insist on driving my Harley home* at 2am. So sure, we should be nicer to our neighbors... even if they are idiots. ;-)

* I haven't ridden since the accident, but pick up the Harley tomorrow afternoon. I hope. Depends on the level of pain.

[David]
MD already has rules - like Ian, are you not happy with the ones which are setup currently?

[Arlo]
Most of this is a non-issue to me, although I think the problem is attracting more people into the dialogue who are interested in actually philosophical dialogue. I have ignore filters I use for those who I find offer nothing but low quality ideas, and I have highlighting filters I use for those who I find offer only high quality ideas. I support Horse's decisions to remove low quality contributors when they start dominating via frequency and volume, or when they repeatedly violate the broadest guidelines of intellectual quality ('Pirsig is a weak interpreter of the MOQ' has to be among my favorites). So I wouldn't add "rules" in the sense I'd suggest a re-examination of intent.