Hi Arlo - for a while, a few months ago, I thought we'd fallen out ;-)

Hope you don't mind if I turn this into a dialogue - I've been sorely
missing intelligent conversation.

I said second order, You said nuanced. Agreed. My focus may not be in
the isms, but nor am I ignorant or dismissive of them. I obviously
appreciate (and have said several times) that professional
philosophers "may" need to communicate with each other with their
preferred nuanced terms, to make progress in academe. Good luck to 'em
I say, sincerely. Just not my game. We all have different strengths,
aims and motivations. Life would be boring if we didn't.

Here's a substantive point to discuss, with no apology for hijacking
the thread ?

Fitness - in the Darwinian jargon - is much misunderstood IMHO.
To my mind fitness = quality (good, bestness of fit)
Best fit with the environment, where the "environment" is what is
(radically-empirically) experienced.

After that it's two-way causation (river and landscape) influencing
and being influenced by the environment, and when that environment (MD
for example) involves other "players" it's a "game" in the technical
game theory sense of the word - the game of real life in the real
world. Most important it's not the subject (the experiencer) nor the
object (the other, the environment, the experienced) that is most
significant, but the interaction of the two the fit, the quality. [To
me this is just a statement of the blindingly obvious, guided by the
MoQ view of things, naturally.]

(I really want to get back to the taboo subject - the evolution of
"intellect" - in my original post in this thread, but I'm not in any
hurry. I prefer to build on the non-contentious stuff.)
Ian

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 3:25 PM, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <ajb102@psu....> wrote:
> [Ian]
> FWIW Arlo, I meant something much simpler by "THE MoQ" being Pirsig's idea(s).
>
> [Arlo]
> Understood, Ian. When I find myself using "The MOQ", its how I use it as well. And really, this is how the historical narrative evolves, Pirsig says something in response to someone, then someone else responds to Pirsig, and we have two focal areas of study (1) towards a given author's philosophy and (2) towards general 'schools' that appear along the way. We study what Peirce wrote, because we find it valuable and interesting, or we study 'semiotics' (reading Peirce, de Saussure, Eco, Voloshinov, etc.) maybe looking at the similarities and nuances and arguments of multiple authors along the way. And in both areas we see 'evolution' at play.
>
> At present we definitely have the first area, Pirsig's philosophy, and as DMB points out there is a robust body of contributions aimed towards this. And I think this has been, more or less because of this, the main purpose of the list. As for the second area, I think we see fledgling beginnings to what may emerge as a 'school' of thought as critical authors modify, extend, or otherwise reconstruct similar-yet-divergent metaphysical ideas. I think Bo's and Tuuka's ideas would count in this area. I don't think we really have a term for this 'school' (and its really not a top priority to assign one), but its hard not to foresee a time when we the same evolutionary growth to Pirsig/Hegel - MOQism/Idealism.
>
> [Ian]
> The uncontentious stuff?
> Quality before subjects & objects.
> Static patterns of quality in the 4 significant layers.
> DQ as the potential for all patterns of quality, "radically empirical" experience independent of prior conception of static patterns, patterns that arise from processing that experience.
>
> [Arlo]
> As similar-yet-divergent reconstructions of Pirsig's foundational work appear, I expect the things you mention here to be the central categorizational determinants to whether one is operating in the same 'school' (the way we can say that both Fichte and Hegel are 'Idealists' even though they diverge at points). Of course it may not be all of these, or there may be more, this will the result of the historical dialogue. Eventually, something will come along that will be so radically different it will spark its own subsequent school of thought, and evolution will continue the way it always has.
>
> [Ian]
> As you already know my interest is not in isms, but in practical use of the resultant framework.
>
> [Arlo]
> I agree with you on this.
>
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