Bo, Marco and other interested.
Thank you for your replies. I will try to reply to both your mails in here,
and I hope that it is not too confusing.
First of all, Bo was "worried" and said "Hope you don't break.:-)". I think
it is scary that there are so many interpretations and understandings of the
MoQ (e.g. Socialism vs Libertarianism), but then again it also would be
scary (and not very interesting) if you all agreed on all the questions and
possibilities in the MoQ. So, I'm very pleased that two persons with somehow
diverging view on the MoQ are so kind to answer my questions, giving me the
opportunity to make up my own mind, instead of just accepting the answer I
get. I hope you both continue "tearing" me.
So, on to the stuff that Bo wrote in reply to my intellect over biology
examples (suicide and bathing in 16 deg C water):
>It's a knee-jerk reaction to think that each time an impulse crosses
>our mind we operate at the intellectual level, but that's not so IMO;
>Brooding on suicide is mostly social-induced, I have yet to meet a
>successful, well-adapted person who wants to kill him/herself,
>while love- and financial affairs ...in general loss of social status
>range high on the list. Consequently it is the social me versus
>biological me. Intellect - looking objectively on it - wawers and
>usually takes biology's side, but isn't able to prevent emotional ad-
>hoc impulses.
OK, I might have given the intellectual level more than it deserves. I tried
to recall why I regarded these thought processes to the intellectual level,
and looked back in chapter 30 of Lila where insanity is discussed. Pirsig
among other things writes: "Both lunatics and mystics have freed themselves
from the conventional static intellectual patterns of their culture. The
only difference is that the lunatic has shifted over to a static pattern of
his own, whereas the mystic has abandoned all static patterns in favor of
pure Dynamic Quality".
I also think I remember that Pirsig writes that psychiatrists are the
guardians of the static intellectual patterns, like the police are the
guardians of the social patterns. I also remember him writing that the first
place we should send an insane person is to an anthropologist - trying to
find out if this is a culture of one, or a strange unknown culture.
There is a couple of things that could be raised at this moment:
1 - If I understand you correctly, the intellectual pattern are the ability
to imagine abstract ideas, and are not involved in "Today its hot, I should
go to the beach to cool down" activities, although these are abstract in
some sense (and not serving the Giant !!!). The intellectual level is more
about understanding scientific, theological etc ideas and understanding art?
2 - If this description of the intellectual level is correct, I don't think
that psychiatrist are very interested in this level. I don't think they care
if I believe in Aristotle's physics or Newton's physics, and they might not
even know the difference.
3 - Both psychiatrist and anthropologist are however very interested in a
persons ability to adapt to social patterns, and most of the examples that
RMP gives in chapter 30 is more related to social patterns than to
intellectual patterns (if we agree on the above).
I must admit that I've never seen a psychiatrist, and have not much
knowledge about what they do, but I see my anthropologist every day :-), and
I looked over most of her books during her study.
So, I don't think I have a problem accepting your view, but I think it
contradicts a little with RMP's view, if I understand him correctly. I do in
some cases think that RMP must be wrong, are influenced by his cultural
background, or at least are using inaccurate words. E.g. when I was reading
the socialism statement, I said something like "Ahh, he's American, he
doesn't know what he's talking about. He's talking about Soviet Union" to
myself. I don't know what he was thinking about, and I understand that he's
been outside America when writing Lila, but I still uncertain if the "static
and dull" also apply for the western European socialist cities he
experienced. I guess the same can apply to the intellect or social patterns,
and that we can't take his words literally in all cases.
Bo aslo wrote:
>The bath example will be along the same line (I had a swim at the
>"Sola strand" once:). Perhaps it's not Intellect that deem
>swimming in cold water good, but rather your social side who
>wants to "feel better", but even if Intellect is involved it can influence
>the social level and thus decide what to do.
In Alain de Botton book "The Consolations of Philosophy " there is a story
about a man that had a terrible headache, and had a friend of him to drill a
small hole in the side in order to let some air into the scull. He died
hours later of a brain haemorrhage. IMO there is two possible ways for the
remaining people to look at this and avoid it to happen again:
1 - From a social level: "This was not a good idea, we have to teach
everybody not to do that".
2 - From an intellectual level: "This was not a good idea, we have to find
out the reason for why this did fail" and so go and create a model of what
happened.
The first way may be sufficient in many instances, but may also go astray
when cause and effect are not fully understood. The second way will be an
improvement, as we try to examine the cause and effect model. When the cause
and effect model is established, this explanation might become guidance for
the social pattern. That is maybe the same thing that is happening to me
when I'm having a swim, my social level is telling me "you will feel
better", or even the intellectual level is giving the social level a reason
for this choice.
Marco asked me (on the sideline) to consider giving all the brain skills to
the biological level and that the above levels force the mind to produce
ideas for their purposes, and this makes some sense to me (after some days
of thinking) in some ways.
What first comes to mind is the Shock treatment description in Lila chapter
30: "The value of shock treatment is not that it returns a lunatic to normal
cultural patterns. It certainly does not do that. Its value is that it
destroy all patterns, both cultural and private, and leaves the patient
temporarily in a Dynamic state". So shock treatment is obviously doing
something to the biological brain, and it is changing the social and
intellectual patterns.
Also the "inheritance versus environment" discussion is interesting. I
obviously have an inherited talent for mathematics and physics (based on my
education experience and the three generations of mathematical educated
ahead of me), but I struggle quite much with language. This is definitely
influencing the way I manage to interpreter intellectual ideas in different
areas. So it would be tempting to say that biological pattern is inherited.
And that the social and intellectual patterns is a product of environment,
but the talent for interpreting social and intellectual patterns could
however be improved and limited by the inherited brain.
Stephen Devlin wrote:
>As a thought experiment to delve a little deeper into "I","Me" and the
>"self", if person A and person B were identical twins and person A had the
>EXACT same thoughts as person B would they both mean the same person when
>they said "I". (The identical twin bit is there so that we can leave a
>physical description of the self as irrelevant).
If you are following the description above (in general terms at least), and
we assume that the identical twins was born with the exactly equal brain's,
they would still not have the same "I" in terms of sharing the "I", but
these I's could be equal (but this is a unrealistic case).
>My own opinion as of right now is that the self as we see ourselves
>is nothing more than a collection of thoughts and memories and the "I" as a
>separate entity independent of its thoughts i.e. objective observer also is
an
>illusion
I think I tend to see "the self" and the "I" as very much the same thing and
that the conscious "I" is going over all the social and intellectual
patterns in order to make up "my mind".
I quickly looked at "Zen and the art of archery" a couple of day ago, and
the unconscious "it" that is performing the "art" is looking quite much like
the "Me" in Nørretranders description. The difficulty in archery compared to
soccer is that the consciousness has more than enough time to over-rule the
unconscious "Me". What do you think, Bo?
It's late, and I have to start working again tomorrow, so this have to be
it. Thank you for reading.
Gerhard
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