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

[david buchanan]

"The Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be separated from the Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the rest of the printed philosophic tradition it doesn't change from day to day, although the world it talks about does. ...The static language of the Metaphysics of Quality will never capture the Dynamic reality of the world...."

There are similarities between chess and philosophy, Pirsig says. I think this should be the manifesto for this forum, where the aim is to get in there and play the game well...

"Both are highly intellectual pursuits in which one tries to manipulate symbols within a set of rules to improve a given situation. In chess one can benefit greatly by studying the games of the masters. In philosophy one can also benefit greatly by studying the writings of the great philosophers. But the important point here is that studying chess masters is not chess itself and studying philosophy masters is not philosophy itself.    The real chess is the game you play with your neighbor. Real chess is 'muddling through.' Real chess is the triumph of mental organization over complex experience. And so is real philosophy."


David Harding said:
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 replied:
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.


dmb says:
According to SOM, intellect and values are two different things - and that is the problem with SOM. The MOQ, by CONTRAST, is what you get with the formal recognition of Quality in the operations of intellect AND the MOQ says that intellectual truths are the most evolved, most dynamic and most moral kind of static value. It is a species of the good, subordinate only to DQ itself.

And yes, of course there is more to intellectual quality than just logical consistency, just as there is more to writing than just grammar and spelling and there is more to motorcycle maintenance than just mechanical reasoning and good tools. You gotta have a feel for the work to know what's good. Pirsig shows us what excellence means with the writing lessons in Bozeman classroom scenes and of course his central metaphor, he says, is a miniature study in the art of rationality. There are countless factors involved in distinguishing artful rationality from artless rationality but when somebody presents a contradictory claim or a logical inconsistency (over and over again), then logical coherence becomes an issue.

My complaints about the incoherence of "ever-changing static patterns" are NOT based on the belief that logic is supreme or that definitions give us the essential truth of reality, of course. They are based on the totally uncontroversial "belief" that incoherence in thought and speech is bad. How is that even debatable? Of course it's no good to be logically inconsistent. What could be more obvious? If intellect is an art form, then using the key philosophical terms in a contradictory way will mark you as a hack, as a very bad artist. It's like the would-be novelist who doesn't understand drama or grammar. There's not much chance they're gonna produce anything artful. As Arlo said,...



Arlo said to David Harding:
... 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.


dmb says:
Exactly. We could even examine the nature of this forum in light of the MOQ's evolutionary morality. Since it's simply impossible to put the immediate flux of experience into an email, we are limited to exchanges of static quality. And since we don't want a philosophical discussion to be dominated by social or biological values, we are led to a very obvious conclusion. Intellectual quality is the standard and the goal, the coin of the realm. Reality itself is undefinable and can't be contained in words or books. But we can talk about books and metaphysics spelled out therein. Words are definable and metaphysics must be definable and knowable. There is no metaphysics without that and the MOQ is the one we're here to talk about. 



David Harding said:
...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 replied:
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,...



dmb says:
The MOQ rejects the idea of a single, exclusive truth. It rejects "objective" truth in favor of pragmatic truth. So, yea, there is not just one 'true' answer but it simply doesn't follow that "there are no 'false' ideas." Do we take the phrase "biological quality" to mean that nobody ever got sick or injured or died? Of course not. And the same goes for "intellectual quality". It doesn't mean that all ideas are inherently good. Quality always has that negative face and includes the repulsive as well as the attractive. When you say, "I have bad feeling about this _____", it show a sensitivity to the quality of thing every bit as much as when you say, "Oh, this is good!" You can get to excellence either way, following the good and rejecting the bad are just two sides of the same coin. Betterness is the result either way.

I think incorrigibility is one of the worst kinds of negative intellectual quality. It kills the possibility of betterness. It's intellectual death, basically. Total stasis. That's what makes Marsha's parrot routine so sad, unless and at odds with the point and purpose of this forum. It's just a refusal to play the game, a refusal to do any real philosophy. She never muddles through. She only weasels out - usually by denigrating the game and/or the players.


"Both [are highly intellectual pursuits in which one tries to manipulate symbols within a set of rules to improve a given situation. In chess one can benefit greatly by studying the games of the masters. In philosophy one can also benefit greatly by studying the writings of the great philosophers. But the important point here is that studying chess masters is not chess itself and studying philosophy masters is not philosophy itself.    The real chess is the game you play with your neighbor. Real chess is 'muddling through.' Real chess is the triumph of mental organization over complex experience. And so is real philosophy."