Hello new MOQ Focus
This month's topic seems to bear a certain relationship to the
previous one - the way the latter came to develop at least.
>Pirsig says that the four levels of the MOQ are "all there is". But if
>each level evolved out of the one beneath it, then is it possible for
>a fifth level to emerge? If so what are the possible candidates for
>this level and how would we recognize it?
Diana points to the MOQ tenet that each level grows from the
former so there's no reason that the Q evolution should stop at
Intellect. It may sounds ridiculous - after P saying that Intellect
took precedence in Western culture around 1918 - to suggest
such an enormity. After all, the Inorganic is the age of the
universe, Biology as multi-cellular organisms is 1.5 billion years
(according to the latest theory) and Society (in the Q sense) at
least some hundred thousands years.
Intellect? That's our constant headache. Its 'emergence' is perhaps
as described in ZAMM, its birth as Jaynes' bicameral idea hints to,
but its very root? Back in some remote prehistoric past? What this
looks like is a kind of time scale shortening so it may well be that
DQ has started to test the walls of its own latest static "prison".
What is important here is another MOQ axiom: A level grows from
its parent and is indistinguishable from it in its embryonic stage.
Consequently, an X level will be Intellectual for all appearances, but
its purpose will eventually deviate from it in a most profound way.
But - again - an X level idea must have some implications for the
way we regard Intellect: it can't be the mind/mental (different from
the matter/concrete we so easily bring over from the SO notion)
where different "metaphysics" vie for dominance.
For instance - comparing with the other levels - there is no
competing Social value co-existing with the ordinary one or
another kind of Inorganic value competing with matter; the value is
the level. There can't be two theories in the metaphysical sense
"inside" Intellect; it is SO-logic and a value beyond will have to start
with the SO premises, but it will - eventually - snatch the
metaphysics - AS THINGS REALLY ARE - label from Intellect.
How can we recognize it? IMHO and according to the above. It is
anti Subject/Object Metaphysics, but not anti subject-object
"intelligence" (or logic or thinking or...whatever. That is our human
pride). Slowly my vision of the MOQ has shifted to this version. It
may be even more than Pirsig asks for :-) and it doesn't have his
endorsement, let that be said.
Thanks for your time
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
